My First Quilt Link Party

As I said last week, I realized recently that I started my first quilt 20 years ago, which certainly seems like something worth celebrating. That also means I've been quilting more than half my life, since I started at 19 😊 (Yep, I turn 40 this summer, but more on that later in the year!)

To celebrate 2 decades of quilting, I thought it only appropriate to host a link party all about our first quilts. To participate, simply pull out that first quilt, or the pictures of it, and write up a new blog post about why you made it, the experience of making it or whatever else you want to say about it. Then come link that blog post here so we can all go read about the quilt that started you on your quilting journey.

Don't have that first quilt, or any pictures of it? No problem, locate one of your early quilts and write about that!

Don't have a blog? No problem there either! Email a picture or two to me at devotedquilter at gmail dot com along with a blurb about the quilt and I'll post it on my blog and link it up so everyone can read it 😊

My first quilt...

...was a wedding gift for my friend Michelle and her new husband, Brian. Michelle was the first of my friends to get married...and the only one to get a quilt, lol. Knowing that I wanted to make them a quilt, Mom gave me a quilting magazine with a pattern in it called "Love and a Little Lunacy," which seemed perfect, except it was only a mini quilt and I wanted something much bigger. I thought I still had that first quilt magazine, but unfortunately I can't seem to find it to tell you who the designer was.

Mom and I came up with a plan to use the blocks from the quilt, but make a lot more of them, add a few of our own design and a fair smattering of personalized embroidery to top it all off. Nothing like keeping it simple for your first quilt, right?

I can remember that we bought the fabrics I used for the backgrounds of all the blocks and the red sashing/borders, but I have no idea where all the fabrics for the blocks came from. Mom's stash of crafting fabrics, probably, but we may have bought some of them specifically for this quilt.

I don't have any pictures of the quilt until the summer, when I was basting it together. Forgive the quality of the pictures...these are actually pictures of pictures.

Here I am at 19, probably contemplating all the hand quilting I'm soon to be doing. All of the white lines in the red sashing and borders were my guidelines for quilting.

The blocks on the left (the moon, star, heart, and flower) were the blocks in the original quilt design. They are fusible appliqued, with blanket stitch done by hand in black embroidery floss. The block in the middle has a center panel hand embroidered with the date and location of the wedding and wedding rings. The blocks around it were ones we designed.

Two of the corner blocks were personalized with the bride and groom's full names, birth dates and hometown (the sunflowers are blocking out Michelle's info). We designed the bear and baby block appliques too. Funny story about those embroidered center panels...Mom bought me an iron transfer thing to get the design onto the fabric, not realizing that the transferred ink would be permanent. I stitched the first of the panels, the wedding one, I think, and then we tried washing out the ink because you could see it all around the edges of the letters. No go. I had to redo the whole thing. I can't remember what we ended up using to transfer all the letters to the fabric, but whatever it was, it washed out when I was done!

Mom had (probably still has, actually) a bunch of little newspaper clippings with these little Love is... sayings on them. We used two of them for the center panels of the other two corners. The little people look rather odd here because their faces and hair were embroidered but I quilted their bodies, so in this picture they're just faint blue lines.

And here I am getting started with the hand quilting. I must have been crazy, hand quilting all through the summer, but I got it done in time for the September wedding!

Then came the binding. Oh what a mess that ended up being! We bought packages of double-fold bias tape and Mom showed me how to fold it around the raw edges of the quilt so that when I stitched around I'd catch the binding on both sides. When I actually did the stitching, though, I stitched nowhere near straight, so there were plenty of places where I didn't actually catch the binding on the back. No worries! I just stitched those parts again 😊 I didn't bother to rip out that first line of stitching, either, just went right along again. If I remember correctly, there were places where I stitched three lines trying to catch the back of the binding! Thankfully my binding skills have improved since then.

I haven't seen this quilt since I gifted it to Michelle and Brian. I don't even know if they still have it, but I am so happy I made it. The hours I spent working on it were only the first of many, many (many!) hours of quilt making over the past twenty years. I never could have guessed back then what a huge part of my life quilting would become!

Now it's your turn 😊 Link up your post about your first quilt and by sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate the start of their quilting journeys too.

An InLinkz Link-up

Becoming - Part 2

Devotion for the Week...

Last week I started this two part series on Becoming and you can read part 1 here. Today I want to tackle part 2.

The verse I am using for this series is 1 John 3:2, which says, "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

Last week we looked at what we are becoming in this lifetime and this week I want to look at what we will become in eternity. John tells us "that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." But he also says that "what we will be has not yet been made known." 

The part I find most interesting is we shall see him as he is. It makes me think of 1 Corinthians 13:12: "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

The Bible tells us about Jesus. We see in it His compassion, His love for people, His gentleness, His relationship with the Father and His utter disregard for religious traditions that kept people from having a relationship with God. We know that we are to be like Jesus and so we try to be compassionate, loving, gentle, etc. With the Holy Spirit to help us and guide us, we can certainly be much more compassionate and loving than we could be on our own, but I believe we still fall far short of the truth of what Jesus is.

Jesus is perfect compassion. He is perfect love to all people. He is one with the Father. But what we read in the Bible is only an approximation of what Jesus is.What we read in the Bible is the best God could do to explain Jesus in a way that we humans would understand. Everything about this world is tainted by sin. Everything is tainted to some degree by anger, selfishness, greed, fear, impatience and more. Even our happiest relationships have their rocky moments where someone says something in anger now and then.

Because of the taint of sin, we can't understand perfection, no matter how hard we try. And because we can't understand perfection, we can't really understand Jesus as He is. But one day we will! One day, when we are in eternity with Him, we will no longer be surrounded by the taint of sin. Then we will understand His perfect love and perfect compassion and his unity with the Father.

And not only will we understand it, but we will be like Him, meaning we will have that perfection ourselves. Can you imagine living no longer prone to selfishness or impatience? No longer dealing with anger or fear? I know...I can't really either! It seem so far out of the realm of possibility, but only because we've never before lived in a world where sin doesn't exist. But that will be our beautiful reality for all of eternity.

Someday, "when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." What a beautiful promise that is!

Announcing the "My First Quilt" Link Party

I realized the other day that I started my first quilt 20 years ago, which seemed like a milestone that calls for celebration 😊 So, to celebrate, I decided to host a link party all about our first quilts, which will open on February 8th and will stay open for two weeks.

To participate, dig out your first quilt, or pictures of it, and write up a blog post telling us all about it. What prompted you to make it? What do you love most about it? Is there anything about it that could best be described as a hot mess?

If you don't still have your first quilt and there are no pictures hanging around, feel free to write about the earliest quilt you do have access to instead. Whatever works for you to be able to join the party!

Spread the word and invite all your friends to join in 😊 I hope to see you there!

* Edited to add - I was asked if people who don't have blogs could send me pictures of their first quilt along with the story. I think that's a great idea! So, if you don't have a blog, but you want to take part in the party, just email a picture or two of your first quilt (or earliest quilt) along with the story behind it. I'll do a post or two about those quilts, depending on how many are sent to me. Email the pictures to devotedquilter at gmail dot com.