Surfing the Learning Curve

I am thrilled to be posting that one of my favorite quilts I've ever made is now officially finished. I have to laugh at myself because this quilt was "almost done" for months and months and I even pulled it out a few times to put on my son when he was sleeping. (There I go again using quilts before they are finished, obviously I don't make quilts to hang on the wall!)

 The amusing part is that this quilt was not actually completed only because of a small square foot in the corner that still had a few safety pins in it and hadn't been quilted. I ran into a bobbin problem, gave up on using my FMQ foot, and went ahead and hand sewed the binding on before I finished that last little bit of quilting. This quilt was like that for ages and I finally whipped it into the machine and finished it in about 3 minutes!

Instant gratification! I really love this quilt and I drafted the pattern from a quilt trick I saw online where the hexagons were cut in half and sewn in strips to avoid an encounter with the Y seams.

This quilt was made with some scraps and a few dressy shirts, so I could test out my pattern before I cut into some nicer stuff for a lap-sized quilt.

I have to give a huge and heart felt thank you to the online quilting community because I am finally at the point where I feel like I can make up my own patterns. I didn't know anything about quilting when I started and I have learned SO much from fellow quilt bloggers and their projects and tutorials.

Learning about quilting as I go has been really fun. Whoever said to "quilt all of your own quilts" was spot-on. (I think it was Christa Quilts). That way all of my quilting skills are improving together, and also I love the character that each quilt has when it is finished. If someone else had quilted them, they just wouldn't be the same.

I am still turning out Frankenstein corners! Not perfect yet.

And now I'll leave you with a few pictures of an expertly made quilt, made by my Aunt, Susie Dumas.

 Isn't that a gorgeous country quilt? I am in awe at all of those tiny squares.

As long as I can remember, every time I visited Susie's house she was working on a quilt and had several beauties on the wall. I remember her showing me the callouses on her fingers from quilting. She is not a blogger so I hope she lets me show off some more of her work when I visit for the holidays.

I love that quilting is in my family and I am so proud of my Aunt Susie who has been published and won awards for her quilts. 

I am almost inspired enough to go and baste my queen sized quilt....

Have a fabulous day and thank you for reading!