Naptime Crafting

My first quilt project was a quilt for my son. I found a few half jelly roll packs at my “not so local” to me fabric store, Zincks in Berlin. I followed a jelly roll quilt pattern I found from fatquartershop.com and pieced it together with my 14 ish year old mechanical singer. I picked a blue shark fleece backer and decided not to use batting, mainly because the singer was already struggling to get through the fleece and cotton on some swatches.

Binding was a LOT harder than I thought it was going to be. It was the part I thought was going to be easiest and it ended up being a giant pain in the ass. I had a few false starts on the Singer and got really frustrated, so I put it away for a bit to try again later. At this point I was flopping between projects (Pinkie and a Zippy Bag, to be specific) and my husband and I decided to pull the trigger on a new machine. I chose the Brother Innovis NQ3550W (which will have it’s own review post later). Binding on the Brother was a TON easier than it was on the Singer. I started having fun again once I didn’t have that frustration factor to deal with.

The lines on the blue quilt are wonky, my binding shows through on either side, and I think only one mitered corner meets up how it should. But I had a lot of fun, and it reminded me to not be such a perfectionist. I have trouble engaging in my craft hobbies because I let some of my perfectionist tendencies get in the way. In a way, I feel like if I can’t do it right (on the first try!), then it’s not worth doing at all. And I have to gently (and sometimes un-gently) remind myself that you have to suck at something first to get good at it, and no one is good at anything on the first go. I’m here to have fun and to re-engage my crafting passions so I can find myself post-partum.

All in all, I had a lot of fun. I have been sewing garments and small items for ever but this was the first time I ever made a quilt. There are definitely mistakes and things I could have done better, but my son already likes playing with it. I’m already working on Pinkie and I have some fabric and a pattern picked out for a nice fall quilt.