Harder Than it Looks!

So this week I started on my learning sewing project. Holy cow! There is so much more thought, energy and planning that goes into making a quilt then I thought! I thought mine was going to be a pretty simple quilt at that! I’ll tell you a little about how my week went.

So first I had to find several different kinds of material that I thought might look good together, and then purchase them. Not cheap if you want to get durable, easier on your sewing machine material! Then you have to measure out how much you think that you might need. I actually went with my mom to help me figure this much out since she has done this about a billion times before! We figured that to get an adult size quilt, one that is long and wide, I would need to ask the cashier to cut off at least a yard of material, of each four different colors I picked out, in order to get the size of quilt that I am wanting.

Then after it was purchased, you have to wash all the material so that after your quilt is sewn together, your stitching doesn’t get puckered if the material shrinks. The next step is that you have to iron all of the material out, so that it all looks nice, but so when your cutting you aren’t off any inches because it’s wrinkled. Then comes the planning of your quilt.

In order to make your quilt look neat and orderly, it’s a good idea to draw a sketch of what you want your quilt look like, how you want all of your “blocks to look” and so on. I looked up a lot of different styles of quilts, and researched which one might be the best for a beginner. I plan on doing a “Strip-Block” quilt. This means that I am making a block shape, by sewing together different size strips of material, of different colors. My explanation is confusing, but check out my picture!

So after I got a good idea of what I wanted it to look like, just like you would when you were in school, you make a pattern, so that everything kind of goes together easily. Then, on your sketch you write down your dimensions of what sizes you think that you might want the blocks, and the quilt as a whole to be. For the size as a whole, I wanted it to be the size of a queen comforter, so it ends up being about 96″X 110″. I want my blocks a whole to be 8″X 8″ and each of the blocks are all different sizes.

The sewing machine has a manual that you can follow, and when you pick out a color of thread that is similar to the colors of your material, I chose just basic white. I made my first block this week! Stay tuned, there will be more to come next week!