My First Quilt with Lori Nawyn

It's time for this month's My First Quilt interview! I love reading these stories of how people got started making quilts, don't you? Today Lori Nawyn is sharing how and why she made her first quilt. Lori is a nationally licensed artist who creates art for manufacturers to use on products ranging from stationery to puzzles, textiles and cross stitch and embroidery kits, and home and garden decor. She has a tiny brick and mortar store where she sells her art and her own line of greeting cards and hand painted barn stars.

You can connect with Lori at her website, on Facebook, and on her Instagram accounts for her art, her shop, and her fabric.

And now, here's (one of) Lori's first quilt(s)! Isn't it cute?

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

2023. I've been designing fabric for national manufacturers for a little over three years. I've always dreamed of making quilts with my own fabric, but didn't think I had the skill...and I thought I was too old to learn! With a lot of encouragement from my local quilt guilds (that I joined just with the hope of watching others quilt), I decided to give it a try. I designed a fabric collection--Good Tidings of Skate Joy--that I uploaded to Spoonflower. When I got the fabric in the mail, I didn't know where to even begin. So I put the fabric aside for several weeks.

However, seeing all the quilts others were making with my fabric--and really wanting to learn how to quilt--I finally summoned the courage to create three 9x9 wall hangings which I used my embroidery skills to stitch the blocks to squares of felt; I also made a few small ornaments. I then used the fourth 9x9 block to try my hand at binding. It didn't turn out too bad! I had fun and decided to make a porch quilt to match the decor I'd made for our fireplace. I created a simple panel that I made loads of mistakes on--like adding batting that was much too thick, and really messing up the binding. After unpicking everything three times and ultimately getting the batting somewhat right, I finally finished it!

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

On the porch quilt, I was really winging it and just used my machine--straight stitch and buttonhole stitch. 

Who taught you to make the quilt?

I mainly taught myself by trial and error. I watched almost a dozen YouTube videos to learn how to do the binding.

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

Yes, because I really loved designing this fabric collection.

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

I didn't fall in love with it right away! After so many mistakes on just a small porch quilt, I didn't think quilting was something I'd be very good at--I'm too much of a perfectionist and  really hard on myself! But a lady in one of my guilds helped me take a lighthearted look at myself and my creative aspirations. She said, "If you can't see the mistakes from the back of a galloping horse, they don't matter!" That made me laugh! I decided I was going to jump into quilting and just make what I loved without worrying what anyone else thought.

Where is the quilt now?

Hanging behind the cash register in my fabric and gift shop, Huckleberry Moose.

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

Yes! Just have fun and enjoy the process. Make mistakes and learn from them; they are part of the wonderful journey of learning how to quilt!

Anything else you want to share about your first quilt?

All my art, and thus my fabric, has a story. The girl depicted in the quilt is based on my childhood experiences watching my mother ice skate on a pond in rural Utah. Being on the ice, pirouetting like a ballerina, brought her such joy! Those memories bring me great joy and I wanted to capture them. I added the geese as whimsical characters who I envisioned would also love the wonder of winter.

Thank you for sharing your first quilts with us, Lori! I love that you used fabric you designed yourself!

The Woman Caught in Adultery

Devotion for the week...

This is the first of a two-part look at the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery and brought before Jesus. These two devotions were part of the Moments with Jesus QAL and Devotional Journey. If you're interested in having 40 daily devotions delivered to your inbox to help you focus on God's word in the days leading up to Easter, check out the Roman Adventure QAL and Devotional Journey.

The Pharisees had a habit of trying to trap Jesus, by whatever means necessary. On one occasion Jesus was at the Temple, sitting and teaching a crowd of people, when “the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd” (John 8:3).

How terrified this woman must have been! It would be bad enough in our day to have authority figures drag a woman in front of a crowd and announce, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery” (v. 4) - just pause for a moment and put yourself in that place and imagine the shame and embarrassment you would feel at such a public display.  This woman, though, had to deal with not only the shame and embarrassment, but she would also have been afraid for her life because, as the Pharisees pointed out to Jesus, “The law of Moses says to stone her” (v. 5).

Side note, why was it only the woman brought before the crowd? If she was caught in the act of adultery, then surely she had a partner who was equally guilty, and the punishment for both the man and the woman was the same. So why was she the only one publicly shamed? I’ve heard of scholars who wonder if the Pharisees hadn’t arranged it all beforehand with her partner, which, if true, just adds to the misery of the moment for her.

Jesus knew the Pharisees were trying to trap Him, and instead of answering right away, He “stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger” (v. 6) while they kept on demanding He answer them. The Bible doesn’t tell us what He wrote, but there’s plenty of speculation. My favourite possibility is that He wrote sins the men had committed, which seems plausible considering He then stood and told them, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” (v. 7).

How the poor woman must have trembled when she heard that! 

She wasn’t dragged away to be executed, though. Instead, “when the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman” (v. 9). How long did it take for the men accusing her to slip away? Did she watch them walk away from her, or were her eyes glued to the ground, or maybe on Jesus?

Eventually, it was only Jesus and the woman standing there in the middle of the crowd who had been listening to Jesus’ teaching. He said to her, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” (v. 10). I picture a small smile on His face as He looks at her, a little reassurance for her terrified spirit. When she said no, He continued, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more” (v. 11).

Can you imagine the relief that must have flooded her at His words? How it must have felt to know that she was free to walk away, and that she wasn’t about to die after all?

Do you realize He doesn’t condemn us either? We may not have been dragged before a crowd and our sins declared publicly to everyone (hopefully not, anyway!), but we’re just as guilty as this poor woman was. Thankfully, “there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We are free to walk away from the sins of our past, just as this woman was that day, because He is the only one who is without sin, and He chose to forgive us rather than condemn us.

Ticker Tape Heart Rainbow

Welcome to this week's TGIFF party! Before we get to the finish I'm sharing, did you know that registration is open for the Roman Adventure QAL and Devotional Journey? It's a 40 day QAL with daily devotions as we prepare for Easter. Get all the details here!

Here at Devoted Quilter headquarters, it's not only the quilting projects that sometimes wait a long time to be finished. Some blog posts have to wait for months, too 😅 Case in point, I started this post back in June, shortly after hosting the Ticker Tape Heart block challenge. I even had the pictures of the quilt taken (which is usually my sticking point), but apparently I got distracted and then I didn't come back to finish writing the post until this week. Oh well, after a few months of waiting, I'm happy to share my Ticker Tape Heart Rainbow baby quilt with you.

Since the pictures were taken in June, they have green grass and bare beach rocks rather than the abundance of snow on the ground around here right now.

It was a lot of fun to share this applique technique through the three day Ticker Tape Heart challenge. If you missed it back in the spring, don't worry! You can still sign up for the challenge right here and the daily emails will be sent to your inbox along with the free pattern.

I made 9 Ticker Tape Heart blocks leading up to the challenge so I could make a rainbow of hearts. With some 2 1/2" sashing and a 4" border, they make a great baby quilt.

Since I have my scraps sorted by colour, it was easy to work on one block at a time without needing to rummage through all my scraps. Whichever colour block I was working on, I just dumped that box of scraps onto the table to root through them and see what I wanted to use for the block. I found a lot of fabrics I hadn't seen in a long time, especially in the fullest boxes, since I hadn't dug down to the bottom of them in a while.

If you'd like to get your scraps sorted in the way that makes the most sense for the kinds of quilts you like to make, check out my free PDF guide, Escape Scrap Overwhelm.

The blue heart was the first one I made, and I cut those scraps larger than I did for any of the other blocks. So even though I have the most blue scraps, there are the fewest ticker tape pieces on the blue heart. There are also no repeats on the blue block, and I'm pretty sure that's the only block with no repeats.

For the Ticker Tape Heart block, you can stitch around the appliques when the block is still just a block, or you can sew the whole top together and baste it first, then stitch around the appliques and do the quilting all in one step. I chose to stitch around the appliques with the quilting, which gives the blocks great texture. This could be done with a walking foot, but I always choose to use my free motion foot because I prefer not to have to turn the quilt a bazillion times to go around all the small squares and rectangles.

I chose a rainbow of Aurifil thread for the hearts, plus Dove Grey (2600) for quilting the background. 

Hearts quilted into the background seemed like a given, don't you think? Can a heart baby quilt have too many hearts?

With this bright blue backing, all these thread colours show up nicely. This is why I love solid fabrics for quilt backs!

I debated making a scrappy binding, but then decided to go with this stripe print. It's not quite a rainbow, but it is pretty colourful and I think it gives a nice frame to the quilt.

If you'd like to make your own Ticker Tape Heart quilt, sign up for the challenge here for the free pattern and the videos full of tips for making your blocks.

Now it's your turn! What have you finished recently? Or not so recently, but you finally got around to sharing it? Link it up below, and don't forget to visit some of the other links and celebrate their finishes, too.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter