Practice Quilt and Perfect Quilt

              I made my three quilts in 2012,  two of which are pictured below.  Both quilts are made from the same pattern, 100% cotton fabric, and are the same size 56"x 56"- a good size throw to snuggle up on the couch with.  

I wanted to make my mom a perfectly crafted quilt for Christmas, so I thought it would be a good idea to sew a "practice quilt"  before I started her "perfect quilt." That way, I could make a bunch of beginner mistakes and learn from them without ruining my mom's Christmas present.

Perfect Quilt

Practice Quilt

Making the "practice quilt" took a long time because I did a lot of things for the first time, like: cutting the quilt squares with a rotary cutter (someone gave me the pre cut squares for my first quilt,) sewing the entire quilt on a new sewing machine (I did a lot of my first quilt stitching by hand.) It was also the first time I had used a quilting pattern (my first quilt was of my own design.)
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While making the practice quilt, I learned from the mistakes I made, cutting sloppy squares, stitching to close to the edge, and over-ironing fabric.  I also learned a lot about how my sewing machine works.

Perfect Quilt on mom's couch

A sewing machine,even a basic manual one like my Bernina, Bernette 46, is a complex machine with many functions and small parts.  For a novice, threading a bobbin, replacing a needle, and changing a pressure "foot,"  are tasks that initially take whole afternoons to figure out. I become a tinkerer and a tester, always checking my stitching to make sure I hadn't run out of thread, that I had sewn the right pieces of fabric together, and that a row of stitches wasn't a tangled mess, too loose, or cloth puckering tight.  

Thank goodness, Berninia's manual is clear and easy to read. After 5 or 6 times threading the bobbin, I felt confident doing it without reading the instructions from the manual. It took twice as many tries when bringing the bobbin thread up from the bobbin case and through the needle. Then, after all of that trial and error my quilt was done, but not quite, I needed to wash and dry it.
 Most quilting books advise quilters to wash and dry their fabric before quilting -I didn't bother. After all, I was using all cotton thread and fabric that it would all shrink uniformly as a quilt-and it does. Shrinkage wasn't the problem,it was the dye from the bright red fabric that was washed with a natural, off white muslin fabric (it is now pink around the quilting!)

OOPs! Pretty in pink

The "perfect quilt" that I gave my my mom for Christmas was not literally perfect-there were plenty of snags and not so straight quilting, but overall it looked great. I used a thinner batting from Warm and Natural for the blue quilt, making it less bulky to quilt and smoother tradition quilt look. I had used a poly-fil  extra loft batting from Soft n' Crafty, for the brown and white (pink) quilt, that gave it a puffy comforter look and feel, which I love, but is more material and more snags when sewing. 

The "practice quilt" was well worth the effort. I made my "perfect quilt" for my mom in a fraction of the time it took me to make the practice quilt. I used the same quilting pattern for both quilts, so I was familiar with the directions and measurement. I cut the quilt squares in no time because I felt comfortable using the tools and knew what to do to get straight edges. When the thread got tangled, I had solutions.

And my mom loved her quilt!

The pattern (slightly altered) for these quilts is from Super quick colorful quilts / edited by Rosemary Wilkinson.