Be the Ink

Single Girl quilt face, done

This fall I took my first quilt class, at Whipstitch Fabrics in Atlanta, because I wanted to tackle a quilt design based in circular design. In particular, I had long coveted Denyse Schmidt’s Single Girl pattern, which is a quirky, uneven take on the traditional Double Wedding Band motif.

This pattern had been on my Amazon wish list forever, silently intimidating me with the giant-scale circles and all those tiny pieces. See, I’ve made several quilts, but they’ve been deceptive to outsiders, because every time I’ve made up my own pattern and motif, going off things I’ve seen and loved, but essentially, designing each myself. Following patterns is actually hard, and I wanted to force myself to stick to a method, follow directions, and patiently cut out all the pieces ahead of time, per the instructions, so that by the time you hate the giant queen-size you’ve set out to make and cut all those hundreds of pieces, you actually get down to the sewing, and time flies by, and then you have a massive, beautiful quilt top ready to be layered with batting and backing and grace your bed.

My goal for 2012 is to take this baby somewhere and learn to use a long-arm quilter myself, taking the required course and then using the circular quilting pattern that comes with Schmidt’s design for Single Girl. I started this quilt on the day after my 24th birthday, September 25, and so I want to finish the quilting by my birthday this year, my 25th birthday. I’ve made four quilts, this is my fifth one, and three of the first four have been gifts. The only one I’ve kept, a throw-size in all fabrics I loved, is wonderfully experimental, including my first raggedy machine-quilting stitches on my own machine. It’s a lovely token of early quilting technique, filled with trial and error (read: mistakes). I love it for that, but I am excited to tackle this quilt, a giant one that is made for my bed, and make it a beautiful work of art, showing how I’ve grown in my skill since I began quilting in 2008.

I can’t make it to my final quilt class today, because I’m handicapped from recent foot surgery, but I needed to post some pictures for the other ladies in my class, as well as our teacher, Diana. I hope you guys can post some for me to see, I’m really sad I will be missing seeing the final products! Please post them here, or e-mail them to me, or put them on Pinterest–something!