Improving My Quilting Skills

Summer is a great time to procrastinate. This summer I spent a decent amount of my procrastination time sewing. I made skirts, a purse, and some makeup bags. One of my goal this summer has been to improve my sewing skills. This has meant improving my sewing, measuring, and cutting skills (I admit that I never realized how bad I am at measuring until I started this craft). This post is dedicated to my two favorite quilting projects.

I find bookshelf quilts so intriguing. They are absolutely fascinating. I want to make one so I decided that I needed to start small to see if this is really the life I want to be living. I searched through Pinterest and Google (which many times sent me to Pinterest), looking for patterns. I finally found Don’t Call Me Betsy’s Mini Bookshelf Quilt tutorial. Overall, the tutorial was easy to follow. One thing that’s different between my mini quilt and theirs is that I just couldn’t get the tilted book thing together – so I made three stacked books instead. Above is a picture of the top of the quilt before I attached batting and the back. At some point in the future (maybe after I get a job?), I will make a larger bookshelf quilt.

The second project that I really enjoyed making was a baby quilt. When I found out that one of my friends is pregnant I seized the opportunity to make a crib-sized quilt. I found a pattern at Cloud 9 Fabrics for a 5×5 quilt.  The pattern was SO easy to follow. It took me a little longer than I expected to make the quilt, but it turned out phenomenally. I gave the quilt to my friend when I saw her in Montreal and she LOVED it.

From what I can tell, my skills are improving. I’m slowly getting better at this whole quilt life. Unfortunately, I will have very little time to even think about touching my sewing machine in the next few months.