I first started learning how to do patchwork just over a year ago, when one of the vicars at our village church decided to set up a group for people who like craft to meet once a month and do craft projects together over a cup of coffee. I had seen and admired one of her quilts at a craft exhibition, and remembering that I’d said something like ‘I’d love to be able to do that’, she told me about the group, and said one of her friends would show me how to get started in patchwork. Brilliant! Having made several small projects, I feel I’m now ready to move on to my first quilt! I wish I’d thought of writing a blog right from the beginning, to share progress with other beginners, but a bit belated, here we are. (Basically, I thought this would be a better way to show my Mum how I’m getting on, rather than e-mailing her photos all the time, and there’s an off-chance someone else might look).

I love the colours of autumn, and lightened my walks to work the autumn before last by imagining the quilt I might make. Over time I bought pieces of fabric in colours I thought would look good, but without knowing what pattern I’d use: I just looked for things like ‘autumn’ on e-bay, and sometimes autumn-related specifics like ‘leaves’ or ‘pumpkins’, and made sure to get light as well as dark. But I wanted to wait until I felt a bit more confident before making it, and make mistakes on smaller things that didn’t matter so much.

This is the first ‘block’ of my quilt-to-be, and in my next post I’ll fill in some background (just for the sake of completeness).