Snippets of love

I had been sewing for a few years when I saw beautiful quilts on display at the local fabric store. I was in awe - how amazing that someone could attach tiny pieces of fabric together and create art from nothing! I decided I needed to make my first quilt.

My first quilts were rag quilts. I loved the simplicity of just sewing together rows of squares and then the satisfaction of snipping all the little edges to make it raggedy. I bought a pair of Fiskar's rag quilt snips. They had a spring action that forced the scissors to open automatically. Anyone who has made a rag quilt knows you get blistered hands and painful joints from the repetitive action of all the little cuts. So the snips are an incredibly useful tool to take the pain out of the process.

Next I progressed to other basic quilting blocks. Windmills are so simple to make - YouTube tutorials taught me how to make the squares and this quilt only took 6 hours to sew before the quilting stage. It turned out so pretty!

I made a bunch of fairly easy quilts to give as gifts, enjoying the knowledge that little ones would be wrapped up and cozy in a quilt specially made for them. I made this Doctor Who-themed quilt for a lovely little boy who lived in a hospital while having multiple operations. There is nothing better than putting a smile on someone's face when they are facing difficult times.

Finally, I felt ready to try an art quilt of my own. And I had the perfect reason - my sister was pregnant with my first nephew! She told me she planned a dragon-themed nursery for him. I was so excited to start!

I roughly tacked down the different fabrics to make the background, forming hills and fields to set the scene of my fairytale quilt. The sky went from blue to purple so I could show both daytime and nighttime.

I drew the images I wanted onto parchment paper and traced them onto the fabric. I slowly went over all the lines with satin stitches to make them permanent.

Now I was finally ready to add some dragons! I found images on google image search and sketched dragons until I had a few characters I wanted to create. It was so much fun coming up with little details to add.

Outlining the dragons was tricky. I needed incredibly sharp embroidery scissors that could snip very close to the fabric and make the tiny horns and details on the dragons. I recommend Fiskar's Microtip easy action scissors. They have won an award from the Arthritis Foundation for ease of use, and as a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer, they really do make the whole process less painful.

It was so much fun adding all the little details, I just made it up as I went along, filling all the areas of the quilt with tiny things for my new nephew to see.

Once all the tiny details were added it was time to add the poem around the sides. I used my embroidery machine for that, with a combination of Celtic and Viking fonts for a storybook feel. It felt like a page from an illustrated children's book.

The finished quilt:-

After such a big project I was burned out. I took a few months off before starting another quilt. This time I wanted to explore the joys of my new embroidery machine, and I needed a good excuse - an internet friend told me her sister-in-law was pregnant after a loss of her previous baby. I knew I wanted to make a special rainbow baby quilt to honour the memory of her first child and celebrate the new baby.

I took a large piece of plain blue cotton and went to town adding different balloons and features. Every balloon represented a wish for a healthy baby from the parents.

The rainbows were for a rainbow baby - this is a child born after a loss.

It might seem like an awful lot of work to make a quilt like this for somebody I have never met, but for me the true joy of my hobby is creating something to bring joy to a person who needs it. And I was rewarded many times over when I was sent this beautiful photo of the baby girl enjoying her special quilt.

After these two projects I felt ready for something even more complex. My current quilt is a Harry Potter-themed one - here are sneak peeks of some of the different scenes I have created for it. It's a work in progress, so who knows when it will be done :)

So that's where I am in my quilting journey. I don't know who will receive this quilt when it is completed, but I know whoever gets it will know it was made with love, because that is the real gift I give - my time, my creativity, every stitch I sew is a declaration of how much the recipient is worth to me And the reward is priceless.