First and Last & Wip

This is a picture of the first quilt I ever made over twenty years ago as a teenager. I was taking a one on one class from my cousin who at the time owned a fabric quilting store. This is twin size.I was making a Trip Around the World quilt but I didn't like the pattern very much at the time. It was enough that a punker girl was in a traditional sewing class with my grandmother picking traditional fabrics, dusty and pale blues. So I decided that I had to re-work the pattern somehow without being too obnoxious to my cousin and Va-vo, because they are very nice. So, I decided it would be called "X Marks the Spot" instead of Trip Around the World.

Just so the world knows, I wanted to make a black, white, and red quilt. One of these days I still will make that quilt, because I still want to.

What I did was I left the middle strip the same and I switched the left and right sides of the quilt to make a big X instead of the traditional square on point look. I was impatient at the time and didn't want to learn to quilt. So I tied it with pink yarn. If you know me, I hate pink (especially as a teenager; I am starting to like it now, along with Valentine's Day). I didn't pick the yarn; my Vavo did.

I used this quilt so much as a teenager that it got pretty worn out. So now, as an adult, my WIP is to repair and replace parts of this quilt. I have made the patches for all the torn blocks. I am also replacing the pink yarn with white buttons. I really don't want the quilt to be used any more, so I figure buttons will curb that. The other special part about these buttons is they have been collected over 4 generations and two sides of the family. My Vavo, Tia Deannie (great-aunt), aunt, cousins, me and my kids and my mother-in-law and Grandmother-in-law Ernst donated some of these buttons, plus a few friends, too. Just an FYI, the buttons are plastic, not mother of pearl, and all are white. I am still collecting them to finish this project.

So, this is my FIRST quilt that I hope will LAST, thus the title of this post. If you notice in the pictures, the center blocks are different colors that is where the holes were. The holes were created from where I use to sit on my bed, right in the middle of it, doing my homework as a teenager in high school and as a young adult in collage. Funny to say homework wore out my quilt, but it did.Because this is just a family quilt, and not something historical, I just replaced the fabric with ones that I purchased as a teenager; they are period to when the quilt was made, but they are not matched, as you can tell. I don't mind that for personal use; it shows the quilt had a life, yet it stays period. Anything historical I would take to a person who has historical fabrics and try to match exactly. The other option is to stop use and cover damaged areas with organdy (basted) to hold damaged fabric in place, but not add anything new to the quilt because that changes the age of the quilt. Organdy basted is reversible and does not change the age of the quilt.

Top and bottom photo are true to life; the middle two had bad lighting.