If you followed my blog posts regarding my foray into quilting, you’ll know that I am very much a beginner. I seem to be cyclic in my crafting endeavors, and spend several years working on something, somewhat perfecting and then moving on to something else. That’s where I am right now. I was, and still am to some degree, into beading. I started with just general beading, then I discovered Kumihimo and that’s where I’ve stayed for the past several years. I really haven’t touched my sewing machine very much over the last twenty years. I’ve made a few costumes for church plays and attempted to make a suit for my son’s wedding (notice I said “attempted”–the unfinished top is still hanging in the closet downstairs sans button holes) . I did enjoy making a couple memory bears and currently have one cut out that I haven’t sewn. But somewhere along the line, I got the quilting bug. I’m not sure how it happened. My sister-in-law is an awesome quilter making absolutely gorgeous things and although I admired her work, it didn’t interest me, until recently. I just seem to have gotten a wild hair one day and decided I wanted to try my hand at quilting. I ran across these quilt blocks “Nifty Nurses” by Loralie Harris on Fabric.com and just loved them. I knew I wanted to use them to make a quilt for my daughter . I was a little dismayed after I received them that they were as small as they were so I had to design a bigger quilt around them. Many people have used these blocks and gave me great inspiration. One of the hardest parts of quilting for me is making the quilt sandwich…at least when it’s done on my hands and knees on my kitchen floor. I’ve investigated other methods, but as of yet, I haven’t found one that I thought would work better. On this quilt, I decided I was going to try my hand at free motion quilting. It can’t be that hard, right? Wrong. That’s not true either. It’s not hard in itself, but it is hard to get it to look nice. The most ambitious try was the square  where I did an eight petal flower.

Although it isn’t really clear in this photograph, in the lower right hand corner is a personalized tag I made using my inkjet printer and printable fabric. It just says “Made with Love for Jen by Mom 2018”. And it just so happened that my daughter-in-law saw some green fat quarters I had purchased for a really low price and commented on how much she liked green…..so, to be continued!