And yet I don't do buttons

Quilting is an amazing creature.

To begin with, you take perfectly good large pieces of fabric and cut them into tiny pieces. Then you sit down and sew all those tiny pieces back into a large piece! Now you have a quilt top. Not a quilt, just the top.

Then you take batting, (which is unmade fabric in the same way that flour is unmade pasta), and layer it under your quilt top. Now you take a really big piece of fabric and layer that under the batting. This is called a quilt sandwich. Next you have to baste your sandwich. Some people use pins, some use a special tack gun, some use a glue spray, and some pre-sew using a big basting stitch. Now you get to sew some more. Yes, thats right, we sewed the sandwich so we could sew it some more. Finally, you have reached that part of the process that is actually quilting. The securing of 2 layers of fabric, pieced or whole, with a batting in the middle, by way of sewn stitches.

Finishing off this whole process is the last step, which is attaching binding around the edges of your quilt. Believe it or not, for many, this is the hardest part. Mitered Corners- the bane of many quilters' existence. I dread them! I procrastinate as long as possible before starting them, sew right up to them and decide it's time for a coffee break. I'll come back, sew the 1st corner and zip right along to the next one and wham! Oh look! I think the puppies want to go out! It takes me longer to do those 4 little corners than it does the whole rest of the binding.

But I'm not at that stage right now. Right now, I'm working on learning to needle turn applique` . Why? because I have a big fancy sewing machine! So, of course I am learning how to make a quilt top without using it.

Above is a picture of my very first applique block. I messed up a bunch of places on it, but I think it's still good enough to go into a quilt top eventually. I have 4 flowers, including this one, done so far for this quilt. tomorrow I will show you the 2nd one.