I made a quilt when I was in high school. It travelled the world with me, was much loved, fell apart and then two years ago, I decided to try making another quilt. So, I did a course, made my Dad a very simple quilt with lots of love and flaws. Then made a cot quilt for a friend's first born, then started a massive quilt for our bed ....then in 2010 signed up for a Block of the Month program at Material Obsession called Dolly quilts. It has now, two years later, morphed into a BOM called Starting Blocks but you can find on the MO website the original dolly quilts as separate one-off purchases (or if you are crazy ....like moi...you stay with the program while it morphs from Dollies to Starting Blocks and you can keep receiving little packages of goodness) .
My early experiences of dipping myself back into the world of quilting was that it was large universe of details and precision and I didn't know where to start. So after I had a couple of goes and realised I had a lot to learn, I put myself on a quilting infusion drip. Material Obsession came within my radar and Kathy's blog is in my blog reader as - let me check..it's either in my Favourites (collection of gardening, crafting, cooking, political blogs) or it's in my Craft - everyday Reads group. OK - everyday reads.
As time has passed, these monthly drips have overflown their storage container and really...I..MUST...DO...SOMETHING...with all these little packages. First cab off the rank - Zig Zag quilt. As part of the Dolly program, because you sign up to dolly programs to learn - make samples etc, you are probably interested in trying new techniques, acquiring patterns, fabrics and tools, rulers and templates. Purchasing the added bits are always optional - but I usually always opted in. This month, we got a Flying Geese ruler.
After much cutting - you position the triangles at odds to each other (that's a technical expression) and then sew them together into rows.
Here you can see my rows laid out on the study floor next to scaleable items. You see it was never mentioned anywhere (I would have ignored it even if it was) what size the finished object Dolly would be. I happen to have two dolly quilts, which were actually used to tuck dolly in...and note the difference? The MO zig zag dolly quilt is about 20 inches square - slightly bigger than a fat quarter. Ah, interesting.
I was rather pleased when I sewed the rows into the block that I managed to keep most (if not all) my triangle points. My first few experiences of patchwork cutting and sewing were more on the 'that's done' side rather than the 'quilting-guild-badge-of-honour-precision-sewing' side. I'm still on the bell curve down on the 'that's done' side but would like to see how far towards 'precision sewing' I can move, without bending myself out of shape. I don't want to win awards, I just want some beautiful objects, something warm on our legs in front of the TV and I want to learn as I go.
If you're interested, I found someone on the interwebs who seems to have made a number of dolly quilts. Back in 2009, she also signed up for Material Obsession's dolly quilt program. She seems to be still blogging, but not so much quilting.
It's always funny reading really old posts...there's quite a story in the link-throughs on that blog. Dolly quilt swaps 1, 2 and 3, unkind words, one quilter pointing out that someone's quilting just "wasn't up to standard of a swap"....ouch. Like many people, I got involved in swaps when I first started reading, and then writing, blogs. To be honest, I found them pressured and anxiety ridden (or is that me?). There were deadlines. There were questions one asked oneself about one's competancy...am I good enough for this? And there was always the odd feeling that even though they said 'thanks ...I love it"` was it really useful or beautiful to them? So, I stopped doing swaps and maybe it's where I read these days, but I don't notice that many these days. Do people still do them? Personally, the bake-along that I did was the most fun, least stressful, kindest group of women to share an activity with. I wish I'd signed up at the beginning instead of the end. But hey, that's life.