Starting Out on a Journey

The first quilt I began is still, nine months later, a WIP. My grandiose dreams of quilting let me believe that starting out with a quilt for my full size bed would be a reasonable project. Piecing the blocks themselves wasn't a problem. I had 36 blocks done in two days time. At this point I was just eager to get the blocks together. The concepts of squaring blocks and lining up seams were still foreign. I did attempt to trim all the blocks to similar sizes since they ranged from about 11 1/2 inches to 12 1/2 inches across. Mostly, I didn't care. I just wanted my hot pink and teal squares sewn together so I could see the finished project! As the blocks became rows and the rows became a quilt top, I began to realize that quilting such a large quilt on my little machine was going to really take some doing. And on top of that, I was running out of time. Summer was upon me which meant hours and hours spent each day inside at work. At the end of the day, I wanted to spend a little time outdoors or I was simply so tired I fell asleep as soon as I shoveled dinner down my throat and didn't wake up until it was time to do it all again the next day. And thus, my quilt was yet again put on a back burner. Then came August and the start of another year of grad school. Again, no time for quilting. Days are eaten up by my internship and nights by readings, research, papers, and meetings. My first substantial down time came during winter break. And what did I do? Pulled back out my quilt top...only to realize it was too small, even with the borders I had waiting to stitch to it. Luckily, I had some leftover strips and was able to make six more blocks and attach them. Unfortunately, that is how it still looks. I decided at that point that I needed to practice the actual quilting process before attempting a go at this monster so I yet again set it aside until I was confident enough to wrestle it through my little Singer machine.