My First Quilt

I hope I will get to see everyones first quilts one day. Let me show you my first quilt today. I made my first quilt in 1988 when we lived in Port Moseby, Papua New Guinea. It was a king-size quilt. I think, many new quilters make large quilts because they do not know how much work is involved, or because they are only working on one quilt! Needless to say, I did not pick up quilting again until 1992.

I found a very old quilt book at the local library and I fell in love with the nine patch pattern on it so that I decided to make a quilt. Being a dressmaker I already know how to sew, so that was not a problem. The cotton fabric was readily available because the local ladies wear marry blouses that are made from printed cotton. The fabric was not as good as the quilting fabric we find today, but it was good enough for me at the time. I set to work cutting paper templates and using it to cut pieces from different fabrics I have bought. I then machine pieced the quilt top. I followed the pattern I saw in the library book except for the colours and fabric. You can see the result for yourself in the photos below:

This is a close-up photo of the blocks. I hand quilted along the seams with less than quarter inch away from the seams. I quilted without a hoop of course, and the stitches are not very small, but hey, it was my first quilt! I finally completed the quilt in November 1989.

Here is how it looks on our king-size bed. We used this quilt on our bed when our children were young and they used to jump and roll all over it. The cheaper fabric did not wear well, and as a result they are some tears on some of the blocks. The colours have also faded quite a bit too. Now I would like to see some of your first quilts too.