my first quilt-- I tackled a one block wonder!

Here are some pictures of the first quilt I ever made. It is a one block wonder quilt.

It took me over a year to make this quilt. It is queen size. It was alot of work and there were times when I thought I would never finish. I'm not sure why I decided to make such a large quilt as my very first project. The quilt was actually simple to assemble. The hardest part was cutting the fabric. My friend Robin who is an experienced quilter came to my place and helped me with the cutting. The most important part is getting six pieces of fabric with matching repeats of design exactly lined up on top of each other in a pile and pinning them together so that they don't shift while you are cutting. I was inspired to make this quilt after viewing one on display at the "Quilted Bear" in Ladner, BC. I immediately bought the "One block Wonders" book by Maxine Rosenthal at the "Quilted Bear". I must have read the book through about half a dozen times before I decided to take on the challenge. My goal was to create a quilt that looked pretty in my bedroom, adding some interest to the room, but also blending in with the colors that were already in the room. I am quite pleased with the outcome.

Here is a picture of the original fabric. (yes there was only one fabric used). I choose the fabric because the background is very close to the paint on the walls of my bedroom. I figured the pinks and greens would make nice accent colors.

I think the most interesting part of making this quilt was taking each little stack of triangles, putting them together in a hexagon shape to see what kind of kelidascope pattern would emerge. I would always put about half a dozen of them out to see what patterns would emerge and then sew them together. I was so tempted just to spread them out all over the place just to see what they would look like, but I had to control myself. Once I put them up on my design wall I played around with the arrangement for weeks before I finally sewed it all together. I had a pair of binoculars that I was looking through backwards at my design wall. For some reason the pieces that needed to be rearranged just seemed to pop out at me when I did this.                                                                                           

The quilt was longarm quilted by Rose Momsen in Point Roberts WA. She did lots and lots of feathering and she did it all freehand. Then she did some beautiful flowers and vines on the border.