The easy way and...

My way (that is, the hard way).

I am a wannabe quilter. I recently finished my first real quilt, ten years in the making. I learned a lot, mostly about what not to do. I'm working on my second quilt now Having just finished my second quilt I'm learning more still. Best of all, I'm changing how I learn.

I have a habit of approaching new and complicated tasks as if I should be able to figure them out on my own. This is how I went about making my first quilt; that didn't go too well. It's also how I started the second quilt. I learned a bunch on the first one so I figured the second one should be effortlessly great, right?

At Rhinebeck I told Craftivore about the mistakes I made with the first one, namely the unintended pleating (on. both. sides!). Then something marvelous happened, she gave me some advice:

• Tape each layer of the sandwich to the floor before basting the sandwich together.
• Use a walking foot. 

Maybe not earth-shattering stuff to you guys, but for me I learned some stuff the easy way and, as Homer Simpson would say, with sexy results! [eyebrow waggle]

This second quilt was a great learning experience and the key lesson learned was that I don't need to come up with all the answers by myself. Sadly, I started the quilt before my epiphany and did learn a bit more the hard way (fabric grain is pretty important, we'll leave it at that) though mostly I found workarounds to any issues as I went.

I really didn't have a plan for this quilt going into it, just some fabrics I liked and that I thought looked good together.

There was lots of cutting followed by lots of piecing...

I decided on three long panels of different widths and did a lot more piecing...

But my panels weren't exactly straight so next came lots of stitch ripping, a hodge-podge of pieces and layout trials.



A happy Zen meditation later, all the pieces fell into place.

I took Craftivore's advice and the actual quilting was a walk(ing foot) in the park.

And when it came time to bind, I turned to the experts. I actually read the binding sections of my quilting books and looked to the interwebs for supplemental detail. Then and only then did I set out to make my straight-grain, double-fold corduroy binding. And it was good.

They say third time's a charm. Looking forward to finding out!