Quilting & Learning - What a Combo!: Lone Star quilt

Thursday, December 06, 2018

Throwback Thursday - my very first quilt

Welcome to Throwback Thursday!

I'm hosting the linky party this month for Sandra at mmm! Quilts while she's busy with family and a wedding :-) I hope that you will link up with me below for this final Throwback Thursday of the year.

My very first quilt!
My mother started quilting after she retired. She loved to sew and quilt but I was very intimidated by all of the rules involved - if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a bit of a rebel😊 So while I appreciated my mother's quilting, I didn't really think that quilting was for me.

My very first quilt - totally hand-sewn and hand-quilted.

When I moved to Ottawa, one of my brothers gave me a clipping of an upcoming workshop to make a healing quilt. It was a weekend workshop and very affordable, so I escaped for two days to make a healing quilt. It was an incredible weekend!

The centre star of the Lone Star quilt

The two ladies who ran the workshop were First Nations. One was an elder and both were healers. A Lone Star quilt was to be sewn and quilted by-hand by the group of about 20 women attending. All of the fabric, scissors, thread and needles were provided. We were shown how to cut the diamonds using templates and then how to sew them together.

What made this quilt so special was the healing aspect of it. While we were working, we were encouraged to think positive healing thoughts for the recipient of the quilt. As you can imagine, it was a very powerful weekend. We managed to finish the quilt top and most of us were able to return a few weeks later to quilt it. There was no quilting frame, just the women around the table quilting on our laps or the table.

When I told my mother how we were making this quilt, she couldn't believe it - but it turned out to be lovely. When I got home, I decided that I would make a quilt like this.

It took a lot longer than a couple of weekends to make it, more like a year. My daughter used it for several years. I also filled it with healing and loving thoughts.

I can't take a photo of a quilt without Chevy wanting in!
Must be all the love in the quilt :-)

What I learned

I learned that there was another way to quilt and that following the rules was optional.
It turns out that hand quilting without a frame still gives good results. I sometimes do the same with my embroidery.
For a first quilt, it was pretty good but not very square. However, a lot of the quilts that I've made, using rulers and a sewing machine, are still not all that square or even!
I used scraps to make the Lone Star quilt, and some of it obviously had polyester in it. I quickly learned the difference between sewing and quilting by hand using 100% cotton and cotton-polyester blends. Let's just say that sewing with cotton is like cutting into butter while polyester is more like cardboard.
I've only quilted a handful of quilts by hand. It's very relaxing, meditative and a great opportunity to fill the quilt with healing or loving thoughts. It's just too bad that it's so darn slow 😊.
I still infuse my quilts with love and positive energy, but it's not the same when I use a machine to quilt it.
I love Lone Star quilts but now that I know what I'm doing, I find them way too intimidating to make!