When I first started quilting I got on ebay and seen an auction for charm squares. I was so taken in by them that I ordered and ordered and ordered. I made a quilt for my mother in law with purple and green pinwheels. The throw was entirely made out of charm squares that I had ordered on ebay! I don't have any pictures of it. I wish I did, so I think I will send her an email and ask her to take some pictures of it for me. I also did this nine patch/friendship star quilt with charm squares. The border is made out of a charms cut and rowed...Oh my thinking back on piecing all those little tiny strips makes my head spin. I must have been very determined to make that border! I love this quilt simply because I did not have a recipe for it, I did all the measurements and block placing! And I hand quilted the entire thing! It was the first quilt that I made for myself! After that quilt, in my stash layed all these packs of squares, mostly ugly ones that I did not put in my nine patch. I didn't know what to do with them. So one day I got them all out, sewed them together row after row after row, and made this scrappy quilt! At first when I looked at it, all I could see was yuck! I hated it! It looked to me like a child who had been at the State Fair all day eating cotton candy, corn dogs, soda pop, ice cream, ya know all that fun stuff?! Well that quilt looked as if that child got on a ride and threw up! I hated all the colors, the prints, it had no form, no design...nothing! So I decided to do some machine quilting...ha ha ha ha ha (in my evil mad scientist voice). I watched some YouTube videos on how to stipple, bought a free motion quilting foot for my machine, and got busy! I thought I was doing really good, not crossing any lines, smooth, flowing, and when I stopped to wrestle the quilt to a different position, I peeked at the back! HOLY MOLY, what a mess! The thread was all nested! I cant even explain how it looked it was awful! So I spent most of the morning removing the stitches, or whatever that mess was on the back! Did some more research about machine quilting and found that first off I needed to get a grip! No seriously a grip on the fabric, that they sold gloves to help this problem, well ya know I live out in the middle of freakin nowhere! But since I am a resourceful person I cut some dish gloves down to wrists and thought to myself that will work just fine, until I can get to town and get those fancy gloves! I also discovered that I was not doing that little back and forth thing in the same spot when you start. I have to admit it was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it! However, the dish gloves, did not work that great, way tooooooooooo much moisture, my hands got hot! I thought I was almost done, when I noticed that I had ran out of bobbin thread probably 10 minutes before...I simply hate it when I run outta bobbin thread! I finished the quilt! I had a few puckers on the back, but it wasn't bad for my first go at it! When I went to town and bought my 1/4 inch machine foot, I spotted those gloves! So I bought them! And like most of my fancy gadgets I haven't used them....yet! Go figure! After machine quilting that quilt, it wasn't so ugly! It was like I bonded with the ugliness of it and accepted it for the scrappy thing it was!
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