The first quilt always has a place in one's heart

The sewing started almost 3 years ago now with a casual flick through a Home and Garden magazine during a visit back to NZ. I really liked the quilt that they had in the magazine, and when I returned to Australia my friend emailed me the instructions. (I still have the photo. See it’s a lovely quilt isn’t it?)

I didn’t want to shy away, or be hampered by a lack of experience or tools, so I started my first attempt at sewing regardless. It was all quite new – choosing fabric and seeing how patterns and colours work together etc - I had never stood in the fabric section of Spotlight before. And then I started painstakingly hand stitching the squares of fabric (that’s right – no sewing machine).

Eventually, about a year later I was 75% through the front, and I put the quilt down. It became difficult to pick back up. It followed me as we packed up our lives in Australia and moved to Canada for a few months, and then on to the UK. It moved from flat to flat in London.

Finally my partner relented to my whinging and bought me a sewing machine for a birthday present (big call as we were transient and living out of suitcases so a hefty sewing machine called for some compromise). It was only then I realised just how quick sewing in a straight line could be with the machine – what had taken me a whole evening to hand stitch could be done in a minute.

It took some time to go back to the partial quilt but eventually I did (this was after yet another country move, and finally being back in Wellington, NZ – having carted the sewing machine back). Only then did I finally finish it – some two and a half years later.

What it illustrates is how much you learn in a short space of time without really being conscious of it. Looking at the quilt now, I will always have a fondness for it as it was my first project and it took such a long time to finish, but if I was to start a quilt with the same pattern again now, I suspect it would turn out very differently. But still, it is cosy in winter and is for me more a heartfelt piece about perseverance more than quality or style.