Presenting: My Quilt!

At some point during this pregnancy I got a strange urge. Not to clean obsessively, nor to search Northern Utah for the fattiest food imaginable (though both of those urges did arise at some point). No, this urge was different. I wanted to learn to quilt.

Yes, quilt.

Being the good grad student I am *cough cough* I put off this urge for as long as possible. But with chapter drafts in my committee's hands and J needing lots of post-travel on-campus time, what else was there for me to do but indulge myself?

I started with this book, Bend-the-rules Sewing by Amy Karol. It's a perfect book for a rookie like myself who is totally overwhelmed by the precision required in fancy schmancy quilts and other advanced sewing projects. She encourages some level of winging it, which works perfectly for me.

I found a pattern in this book for an Easy Lap Quilt. It looked easy indeed. And I just so happened to have some pieces of fabric that went well together and I thought would look pretty in a quilt. Plus the directions specified that the quilting required to finish this piece was simple and easily done on a regular home sewing machine. I could do this! With nothing to hold me back, Doodle and I bought some fabrics to complement my stash and I pieced them together. A couple of hours of fussing over fabric order, plus one day of machine sewing and a couple hours here and there to sew the binding, and Ta Da!

I present my first quilt, completed today.

It's a lap quilt, so it measures ~40" x 40". Good for a full-size Doodle blanket, or smallish grownup blanket.

Here you can see the backing - just a solid piece of the green circle fabric.

It has passed family inspection, and will hopefully get a lot of snuggling time this winter.