Hi friends!

This is a quilt I made in my early days of sewing. I know it must have been in my first year or two of learning, because there’s no label on it (I did not fully appreciate the importance back then).

Label your quilts, people. Or else you are doomed to a fate of deliberating the timeline of each project like this: I specifically recall piecing this quilt top together in our old apartment in Brooklyn, but quilting it in Forest Hills, and we moved here in 2013… it had been a UFO for months by then. So I prrrrrrobably started this in 2012. Oh, look there is a date on the guild recap there! Great! But it’s not quilted yet in this photo… so when DID I quilt this? 🤔 Oh hi Victoria!

Yeah, not very scientific.

I originally conceived of this quilt as a gift for my mom, because she loves flying saucers and popsicles (I know, who doesn’t? But, my mom loves them more). Then I accidentally went and stuck a bunch of bright colors in there that she definitely wouldn’t like, had a “what were you thinking??!” moment (sorry mom), and re-designated it a purposeless/practice quilt that ended up just kind of sticking with me over the years. Those of you who have been to our apartment will recognize it instantly because it’s usually folded up on the sofa or on a chair. I call it a picnic quilt because it’s too small to be a lap quilt if you’re a grown-up, which, regretfully, I am.

I used this tutorial to make the blocks because I was super intimidated by the cutting lists associated with typical log cabins.

Every time I look at this thing, I want to straight-line quilt my next project. Before I could free-motion, I actually lamented my minimal “walking foot only” abilities, but I didn’t really appreciate that straight line quilting is completely awesome in its own right.

I have washed this quilt more times than any other handmade quilt I own, because I wanted to fulfill its randomly-assigned destiny as a “picnic quilt”. It travels easily, and has spent a good amount of time on the ground. And it’s held up well! Not bad for one of the first quilts I ever made. 😉

The back is pieced using leftovers from the front.

You can really see the quilting from the back! So snuggly.

Hugs,
Hayden