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Sunday, June 7, 2015

My First Quilt Project After 20+ Years

When I was a kid I would spend my summers with my Mom teaching me how to make crafts. I went through sewing clothes for my Barbie dolls, making bags using straw rope, making crochet coasters, creating Christmas trees using pistachio nut shells and one summer in high school she taught me how to quilt. My Mom would get retaso from Tita Maming who had a clothing export business and should would cut them into square patterns. My school bag and lunch box in my high school senior year were my hand-made quilt products. I still have them and use them sometimes (yes they're still alive!).

Mom never stopped quilting and eversince she would make blankets for her grandchildren and me. I was looking for a hobby to revive early this summer since I didn't really like creating loombands (I wanted to be offline while crafting and making loombands require you watch online vids). I wanted to go back to reading, but my eyesight has deteriorated (probably coz I use gadgets too much!). One day I realized I wanted to try quilting again, so I found myself in Spotlight buying some fabric and thread.



It was a journey for me to create my first project because I realized that my Mom only taught me how to stitch together square patterns. My quilting lessons didn't include how to put everything together -- the batting, the backing and the piping! My Mom used to finish my projects for me back then. To practice I made a small wallet first (project zero) to figure out how to finish a whole project.



I guess that's how life is as well. Your parents will teach you as much as they could, but you would need to figure out the rest. It took me 2 months and 20,878 kilometers worth of travel (I lugged it around with me) to finally finish this project - a sleeve for my Chromebook - and I must say that it's an achievement for me since I made it on my own. It's not perfect -- all the stitches are uneven, and ugh don't even look at the underside! But I think my Mom would be proud that I finished this without her help.



For my next project I'm going to make a sleeve for my tablet and after that I hope I can have the courage to veer away from solid colors and follow a simple project from a quilting book.

Aja!

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