First Quilt – We All Have to Start Somewhere….
January 28, 2026
Hi!
If you’ve been keeping up with my newsletters, you’ll know that I’m STILL in the middle of a big-and-long-needed clean up of my quilty cabin (studio), and while things are being tidied away, I’m also discovering hidden treasures too…. Buried deep in the bottom of a tub of fabric, I found Quilt History – the leftovers from the very first proper quilt that I made! Everyone has to start somewhere, and so I thought today I’d share the story of my first quilt with you.
My First Quilt
To set the scene…
About 35 years ago, when I was 18, I decided to make a quilt. I’d been sewing for several years as a hobby (I used to want to be a fashion designer), and I figured since I could already sew, how hard could it be? I wanted to make a present for my then boyfriend’s birthday. (This is also why I can’t include a photo of my quilt – it stayed with the boyfriend when we broke up!)
I’m a boots-and-all kind of girl, so I decided that a queen sized Broken Star style quilt would be appropriate, and I jumped in and set to work making a quilt very similar to this one.
The year was 1991, and I’d borrowed this “Country Quilts in a Day” book that had just been published by Fran Roen. This book was great, and detailed how to cut and piece strips, and then cross cut them to make up these quilt blocks, and finish the quilt.
These are the fabrics I purchased for this first quilt.
I had never made a quilt before, and I didn’t know anything about it really, so I just did the best with what I had to hand.
I remember doing this – using my Dad’s metre long wooden ruler to rule lines on the back of these fabrics (after measuring the width of each line in several places) – with a blue biro (!), so I could see the lines clearly, in order to cut all the strips by hand, with my dressmaking scissors. Hello blisters!
For some reason, I still have a bunch of these pieced strips left too. I sewed strip sets and then cut them on the right angle to make these pieced strips, that made the star points.
And if you look closely enough, you can still see the blue biro lines, where I ruled across them on the front, to cut them (with scissors again) into these strips. It was all going to be in the seam allowance anyway, right!
I honestly don’t remember why I would have a couple of pieced leftovers like this, but I do. And at least you can get an idea of the look of the quilt from these anyway.
For a first try, I’m actually quite proud of this. I didn’t know about matching points, or the negative impact that near-enough-is-good-enough strip cutting can have on a finished block. So my points don’t match perfectly – the quilt was still finished, and we really didn’t notice these minor imperfections when it was on the bed.
The illustration of the quilt from Fran’s book.
I even quilted it too!
Again, not knowing any better, I bought that wonderfully puffy poly batting, cause who’d want a flat quilt, right? 😐 . It was a bit tricky to sew, but I basted it with safety pins on the floor, as the book said, and then I man-handled it through my little domestic sewing machine to get it all quilted. From memory, I even did some kind of celtic-inspired intertwined border design, although for the life of me, I cannot remember how I marked it out. Maybe tailor’s chalk??
It was bound, gifted and used, and in the end, that’s one of the best reasons ever for making a quilt.
Lessons I learned from this process –
* Rotary cutters are like some kind of miracle. Never again will I cut out an entire quilt with scissors!
* Clear, long rulers especially designed for quilters are non-negotiables too
* Puffy poly batting has its place, but that’s not in my quilts.
* Where there’s a will, there’s a way! I strongly believe that if you want to make something, give it a go. Jump in, boots and all and learn the process as you go.
* Quilt making is fun!! I enjoyed the process so much that I haven’t looked back, and I now couldn’t imagine life without making quilts.
So, where to from here?
I was so inspired that I made a second quilt soon after for his sister, who was my good friend and housemate. I made hers all in white – different tone on tone cotton fabrics, satin (cause it was shiny!), and lace overlaid over satin. (Yep – more lessons being learned here too! 🙂 )
This quilt was also loved and enjoyed by her, and possibly even loved to death I fear…
Last I heard, it had had a cup of coffee spilled all over it by accident…
Lessons learned from my second quilt –
* Cheap Satin is not often a quilter’s friend, as it’s a bit too slippery and slidey to sew together perfectly.
* Finished is better than perfect.
* Make it, love it, and once it’s been gifted, let it go. Don’t torture yourself with worrying about how it’s being treated.
And there you have it! The story of my first quilts. They showed me that I could do it, and that I enjoyed the process so much, that I knew my love of fabrics was not misplaced, but rather it was better redirected from fashion to quiltmaking instead.
I’d love to say ‘and happily ever after’, but I didn’t make another quilt for a few years after that, as I headed overseas to live and work for a few years. That’s a story for another time though, and I have been fully dedicated to making and designing quilts for more than 20 years now.
I’d love to hear about your first quilt too. Please drop a comment below and let me know – everyone’s got a ‘first quilt’ story! 🙂
Enjoy your week!
5 responses to “First Quilt – We All Have to Start Somewhere….”
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About 50 years ago my mother in law to be gave me her bag of dressmaking fabrics to use during an enforced wet season stay and told me to make hexagons. So I used every type of fabric and made dozens of them basted onto old Christmas cards. After marriage and children I unearthed them and slowly stitched them together randomly.
Two decades later, on retirement I took the bag of sewn strips and pieced together as one large piece and hand quilted them onto a background, no batting at all.
My learnings – not all dressmaking fabric is suitable, but every piece has a story attached. This one is a 3 generational display of what MIL, myself and children wore over the 50 years. Too valuable to use on the bed now but great for memories.
The first quilt I ever made was for our #1 son who was enthralled with dinosaurs. I found a colouring book that featured dinos and used the designs to create appliques applied to a whole-cloth dark blue background. Then I hand quilted (with very large and wonky stitches!) around the dinos. I was SO proud of it, despite it looking like something a preschooler would have done. #2 son wanted a basketball-themed quilt and I again went to colouring books for designs. He still has that quilt and it’s now a favourite of his oldest son who also loves basketball.
I love your “First Quilt…” story. It made me think of a quilt I started back in the late eighties, a tumbling blocks quilt. I don’t have a clue as to where I got the idea or pattern, but I cut that out with scissors and sewed by hand, Y corners and all. I never finished it, but I did find parts of it in the bottom of a bag when I moved house in 2014!
I have always loved folk textiles, hence quilts, but I thought the piecing would be too difficult, so other than occasionally free-machine quilting using self-printed or commercial fabrics, and once piecing polycotton yellow with pre-printed large bunny blocks, I was too timid to try.
It all changed in late 1994, when I was shoulder-deep in making costumes for my daughters’ high school production. there was a fabulous discount bookstore in the nearest big shopping-centre, with a table entirely dedicated to craft books, and there I spied Barbara johannah’s iconic “Crystal-Piecing”, with quick efficient, and most of all, easy, methods to make half-square and quarter-square triangle blocks. (The “layer, draw diagonal line and straight grids, sew on either side of every diagonal line, and cut apart” method of making multiple blocks in one go.)
I had to try it right away. But I didn’t have large pieces of woven fabric handy, so I tried it on two pieces of about 20cm each: a fairly bright mid-blue and a busy print.
That was it. I continued making production costumes till my kids outgrew high school, but quilts took over big time. Now my girls wait months for me to get around to making even the simplest clothes, as I’m too busy making around thirty quilts a year…
My first quilt was made with all polyester fabrics. My mother and grandmother were both quilters, so I had a basic understanding of the process. I learned very quickly the wisdom of using only cotton fabrics. I finished piecing the quilt, but I have never quilted it. Maybe I will get to it some day.