AMANDA SAYS SHE CAN’T SEW!!!

Amanda doesn’t sew!   She doesn’t cook either, she says she can’t, but that might be just her excuse.  She doesn’t need to when I can do that for her.

However, one day she saw the light!  Amanda asked what it would take to get her started in quilting. Well, that was my que to get her involved in this glorious world of quilting.

So, as a simple project for Amanda to start, I suggested to take two panels of 8 designs and sew them together. Amanda had a light bulb moment and said to Alan “I could do that.”  So, with guidance from Alan, she set about sewing the two panels together. 

Now, to a quilter this isn’t much of a consideration but the two panels we chose had 8 distinct blocks to it. Therefore, if the blocks didn’t line up on point it would show up as two simple panels sewn together.  Keeping the two panels on point took some work for her first attempt at sewing and using a sewing machine as well.

When this was done, she was over the moon with herself.  So, while the going was good, Alan showed her how to make a border. After being shown how to make it, she was flying.  Again, making a border wasn’t as simple as joining two straight ends together.  Amanda was encouraged to do 45-degree joints, and actually she did a good job.  From there she was shown how to sew it on to the double panel.  Not only that, the 45-degree angle joins went clockwise around the 4 sides of the panels.

Once Amanda had sewn on the border it was over to Alan to longarm.  The pattern Amanda chose to quilt it was pumpkin, well it had to be kept on the theme of Halloween.

The chosen wadding was black 80/20 as this was a Halloween quilt that had predominately black prints on.

The backing chose was Fusions Aubergine.  Which really did set off the thread chosen for the longarm which was Aurifil Muslin 2311.

After the long arming was finished, next was the binding. For this Alan had a lot of input as Amanda wasn’t overly confident with this bit.  Standard binding was made from Fiesta fabric.  It was then machine stitched to the front of the quilt and hand stitched to the back by Amanda.

When everything was finished, the end result can be seen in the image.

This was Amanda’s first (and upto now only) attempt at making a quilt.  We think she did pretty damn well.

Although Amanda hasn’t made a quilt since then, she has dabbled in EPP hexis, but they are still in the sewing box.  They will have to have an outing next time.

Fabrics used:

2 x Full Moon Panel

Black Spectrum for border

Fiesta for binding 

Fusions Aubergine for backing fabric.