Sewing Lessons - part 1

One of my friends Misaya has been considering having a go at quilting for a while but was convinced that she wouldn't be able to do it. I was convinced she would, so I persuaded her to let me try and show her. After discussing various quilt designs and their suitability for beginners we decided on a strip quilt.

Last Saturday we headed on over to GJs to pick out the fabrics. We picked out the ones pictured above. The animal print at the top right was to be our "feature fabric", and then picked out a fabric to coordinate with each of the main colours in the fabric (down the right hand side). The stripes down the middle will be the binding, and the backing is shown on the left and is a lovely yellow flannelette.

Misaya informed me that she had no sewing experience whatsoever, so we started with the basics, step by step in the process. First was cutting the strips. I showed Misaya how to use a rotary cutter (including the important safety warnings!), and after a bit of practice on some scraps of fabric she cut her fabric each into two strips (of deliberately uneven size).

After choosing the order of the strips it was business time - sewing them together!

Again, after some practice on a scrap of fabric (above) it was onto the real thing! Misaya was a VERY fast learner and her seam was super straight. Here's her first ever seam:

First the strips were sewn into pairs, the pairs into 4s and so on until it was all one piece. A little pressing later and she had a quilt top!

That's where we stopped for day one (a fantastic achievement for anybody, let alone a beginner!). Stay tuned for Misaya's progress on this one, I think it's going to look great.