Quilt as Desired

To this day, nothing is so difficult for me in making a quilt than trying to figure out how to quilt it. I can do a pretty good meander, echo and stitch in the ditch, but that's getting boring.

Several years ago I read a book about expanding your quilting repertoire (I wish I could remember the name of the book now), and the best advice I got from it was to practice, practice, practice. The author suggested having a stack of 8 inch square quilt sandwiches all done up and waiting to be quilted. She used them to practice new quilting patterns and to warm up before working on that heirloom quilt.

It's great advice and in the book she also had ideas on uses for all your quilt blocks. I figured that I could possibly have too many potholders and table quilts, but I needed lots of practice, so I came up with making book covers too.

So get those small quilt sandwiches together and start practicing with the basics like echoing, stitch in the ditch, meandering, loops, grids, etc. and make sure that everyone you know has plenty of pot holders :)

Happy Quilting!