My First Quilt with Cristina De Miranda

How is it the last Friday in June already? 2024 is certainly flying by! Since it is the last Friday of the month, that means it's time for a My First Quilt interview, and this month Cristina De Miranda is sharing the story of her first quilt. Cristina is a Canadian modern quilter and owner of Ships & Violins, which offers quilt patterns, workshops, lectures, and blogs for adventurous quilters.

You can connect with Cristina at her website, on Instagram, and on Facebook.

And now, here is Cristina's first quilt! It's so fun and colourful!

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

I made my first quilt in 2018 after a colleague introduced me to the craft. She showed me a picture of a quilt she had made, it was colourful and featured appliquéd graphic monsters. I was so impressed that it inspired me to give quilting a try. I scoured the internet for a quilt pattern that excited me and landed on Criss Cross Apple Sauce by Vanessa & Co. I purchased some quilting tools (I already owned a sewing machine) and a bundle of her ombre fabrics. I recall the financial investment was a little daunting, but I wanted to give it my best shot and have a quilt that I would like at the end of the journey. I then binged a Craftsy workshop by Gail Kessler and set to making my first quilt.

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

The pattern is block-based. The "X" blocks use the stitch-and-flip method. It's always a little scary cutting into expensive fabric, but I talked myself through it. I kept the offcuts and made a mini quilt with them that remains a UFO (unfinished object). The method required a lot of matching between blocks, which I gave up on doing pretty early on in the process. 

I quilted the top on my Janome Fashion Mate using straight lines on the left and right of the vertical and horizontal seams. The stitching is wild - large stitches, tiny stitches, wibbly and wobbly stitches, but I finished it!

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

Like many new quilters, it's simpler to use a quilt kit when getting started. I loved using all the colours in Vanessa & Co.'s ombre bundle, and I hope to use some of the colours again in the future. 

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

Yes! I loved the motivation it ignited in me. I was often running up to my sewing room to make progress on the next step of the process, and this excitement and creativity was something I really needed at that time in my life.... and something I still need today, 6 years later.

Where is the quilt now?

On my couch!

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Not really, but I suppose I'd like her to know that quilting would become one of the most important sources of her personal, artistic, and professional growth for years to come. 

Thanks for sharing your first quilt with us, Cristina! I'm so glad your colleague introduced you to quilting so we could 'meet' you.

Merry Mini QAL

Back in November/December, I made two Merry Mini quilts. One I gave to my grandmother for Christmas, which was the reason I designed the mini quilt to begin with. The other I used for the gift exchange with my book club. That leaves me with no Merry Mini quilt, which is just not acceptable, lol.

Since I'm going to make another Merry Mini, I thought maybe you'd like to make one, too, and it would be even more fun if we made it a Christmas in July event. So today I'm launching the Merry Mini QAL. Each week for the month of July we'll work on another portion of the quilt so that by the end of the month we'll have a finished mini quilt ready to use to decorate or give to someone special for Christmas. Just think how good it will feel to be so far ahead when December rolls around!

Here's the QAL schedule:

July 1 - Make the text block (I'll be sharing a couple of alternate techniques if you don't want to hand embroider the text)

July 8 - Make the alternating squares borders

July 15 - Make the tree borders

July 22 - Quilting

July 29 - Binding

Merry Mini is a small quilt (you might have guessed that from the 'mini' in the name!), and it uses scraps, making it a perfect summer quilt along project. You probably already own most, if not all, of what you'll need to make it and you'll be able to accomplish each week's work pretty quickly. The hand embroidery is the most time consuming part, but even that doesn't take too long, plus it's portable, so you can work on it out on the deck, or by the pool, or at the cabin, or wherever. Or you can choose one of the alternate techniques I'll be sharing instead of the hand embroidery, making it even faster.

Want to join me? From now until the end of July, the Merry Mini pattern is 20% off with the code MERRYMINIQAL. Use the link below and the coupon code will already by applied.

Get the Merry Mini pattern

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly QAL emails with links to the blog posts, so you won't miss any of them. I can't wait to get started!

Perfectly Reasonable

Devotion for the week...

Before we get into today's devotion, just a note to let you know this will be the last devotion until after the summer. While I love writing these devotions, I have definitely reached the place where my brain is ready for a break!

On the theme of taking a break, I was thinking about Jesus' habit of resting. He had so many people clamoring for His attention, for healing, and for His teaching, and yet He always made time to rest. The most famous example of Him resting involved Him asleep in the boat while traveling from one place to another, even as a storm raged around them: "Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion" (Mark 4:38).

At one point, Jesus sent His disciples out in pairs, and they "went out, telling everyone they met to repent of their sins and turn to God. And they cast out many demons and healed many sick people, anointing them with olive oil" (Mark 6:12-13). When the disciples returned, full of stories of everything they had done, "Jesus said, 'Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.' He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat" (v. 31).

Do you see how many demands were placed on Him? He didn't have get a chance to grab something to eat! What I find amazing is that He didn't feel the need to run Himself into the ground trying to meet everyone's needs before He got to take a break. Instead, He looked at all the chaos and decided it was time to step away and rest. He didn't apologize for needing rest or for taking care of Himself. He just said, 'Let's go get some rest' as if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Because it is!

It is perfectly reasonable to take a break when we need one. It's perfectly reasonable to take a nap, or to spend a few hours reading, or to get away from all the noise to spend an afternoon at the beach. We don't have to earn the rest or make sure everyone else's needs are met before we look after ourselves.

Of course, rest isn't exactly what happened when Jesus suggested they get away. "They left by boat for a quiet place, where they could be alone. But many people recognized them and saw them leaving, and people from many towns ran ahead along the shore and got there ahead of them. Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things" (vv. 32-34).

The Bible doesn't say how long they were traveling in the boat, but I imagine it was enough time for everyone to get a little something to eat, to relax for a bit, and maybe even to get a quick nap (since Jesus obviously didn't mind sleeping in boats). It wasn't the time away in quiet Jesus had intended, but when they arrived and saw the crowd, Jesus was refreshed enough to spend the next few hours teaching. A little rest can do wonders for our ability to help others.

We might not always be able to manage hours away on our own, but it's still important to honour our need for rest. If Jesus made rest a priority, we can, too!