Genesis of my quilting

In the beginning. . . 

I was born into a family where my mother was a home economics teacher (she taught cooking and sewing at the only high school in my hometown).  Sewing was a daily part of our childhood.  Mom traditionally sewed clothes and from time to time made curtains for our rooms.  She rarely ventured out to crafts like pillows and things.

Years ago, my mother gave me an old Bernina 817.  This is the same model I sewed on during my senior year in high school (1978).  It still runs great.

As an adult and parent of two children, I would time to time make curtains, upholster a headboard or sew spillows; once a year sewing was a lot for me.

Headboard in daughter's room

Pillows for the quest room

Curtains for son's room

Two years ago, my son was in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at his high school.  Part of the IB program is every student must do a CAS (creativity, action, service) project. For his project, he wanted to make a quilt and give it away.

He and I went to the fabric store and bought our first jelly roll.  With scissors, we cut the fabric and sewed a modified log cabin pattern.  I mailed the quilt top to my mother and she found someone to quilt it. 

That sparked her to think about the quilts that her mother (my grandmother) had made.  We grew up using grandmother's hand quilted quilts.  My mother (age 82) decided she was going to make a quilt for each of her 10 grandchildren.

When it came time for her to start on my children’s quilts, we began looking at fabrics and patterns.  That is when I first became aware of the modern quilt movement.  I thought most quilts were “duck on a stick” décor.  Our home has a more modern aesthetic.

I bought my first quilting book, Modern Quilts Traditional Inspiration by Denyse Schmidt.

I fell in love with the Shoemaker’s Puzzle Quilt.    We purchased some solid Kona cotton fabric, tore out the pattern from the back of the book and sent them to my mother.  We knew this would be a great quilt for my son (age 18).

The fabric and quilting bug bit me.  Maybe it was a coping tool for me.  My son was leaving for college.  Between August 2012 and January 2013, I have made 13 quilts or one quilt about every two weeks.  This blog is a history of those quilts as well as a journal of future projects.