Blogger's Quilt Festival - beginnings

It is that time again when the lovely Amy from Amy's Creative Side is hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival. Although this is the 9th festival, it will be my 6th time! I really like the virtual festival, even more at the moment when everyone seems to be having a fantastic time at Quilt Market in Portland and I am here in the cold and grey weather of the UK! Blog hopping to marvel at wonderful quilts should cheer me up!

It is always packed with gorgeous quilts and wonderful story. And although I am not making award winning quilts, I like participating and showing the world my own creations! It is a great way to reach out to people you would have never met otherwise and to discover some wonderful blogs that you didn't know were at the reach of your computer!

So this time, I have decided to go back to the beginning and to show you the first quilt I ever made about 10 years ago. I saw a wonderful design (based on a traditional French board game slightly similar to snakes and ladder) and decided I would make it for my cousin's birth. Well I didn't realise how ambitious my choice was for a beginner! I had never applique before or quilted. And in the magazine I used, the explanations were not very detailed, not enough for a beginner anyway. So I went to buy my fabric and to copy the templates to applique on my squares of fabric. Well, I had never done applique before so I used a straight stitch rather than the needle turn method that I would hear about years later! I didn't have clue about fusible or any of these either of course! And I didn't have a huge collection of stuff (yet) so I used a cream thread for all my applique as you can see below.

I suppose one could say that the shapes weren't exactly easy to applique with lots of small pieces and curves etc. But I did my 62 different designs and all the geese.

I even took a quilting class as I didn't have a clue about quilting. Although we were shown and taught about free motion quilting, I kept my quilting very simple with parallel lines in the centre and one line of echo quilting around the oval and the geese, and that was a challenge!

It took me nearly 6 months to make the quilt and that was working on only one quilt as I didn't have any UFOs yet! But that first quilt taught me loads and even if it wasn't perfect, well I was hooked. I was very proud to give it to my Auntie for my cousin's bedroom and she loved it!

Quilt stats:
measurement: well I am not sure but I would say about 60' x 40'
special technique: hand - applique (country style reinvented!) and any other self-taught method which would get me in trouble with the quilt police! (Internet resources weren't as readily available then!) and little embroidery
machine quilted (almost) by myself of course!
made in 2002-20003
time to completion: about 6 months
particularity: my first ever quilt

I had already acquired a small stash of cream and red for the quilt, and that was only the beginning of course, my stash would only grow from there (there are even a few fabric that I still have now!). The pattern was difficult, too difficult for my abilities but that didn't put me off. So much so that I did another similar one when my best friend had her first child in 2006, and this time, it was all needle-turn applique

with more extensive quilting!

Thanks for reading. Of course my quilt is not an award winning piece and it won't be nominated in the festival but this was the story of the beginning of my love / addiction / obsession for patchwork and quilting I guess. I was also so very proud to give the fruit of my work to my cousin when she was just born.
I hope you enjoyed your visit and that you'll come and see me again.

Celine