Anniversary Quilt

Two weeks ago my parents had their 45th wedding anniversary, and as a present I decided to make them a quilt. If you've read any of my other posts about sewing you'll know that I've only been sewing for a couple of months now, and this was by far the most ambitious project I've taken on. I found that the most important thing was to research the crap out of it before you even think of starting. I read dozens of tutorials on the various ways of cutting the fabric, basting the layers, quilting techniques... Every step got thoroughly researched because I had literally no clue what I was doing.

The equipment that I found indispensable was

• a rotary cutter (you need perfectly straight lines for a quilt and scissors just won't do it)
• a walking foot for my sewing machine. It has feed dogs on the foot so that the top and bottom layers of the quilt feed through at the same rate and don't get moved around or bunched up.
• 505 Temporary Spray Adhesive. This stuff is incredible. Instead of basting a quilt with safety pins, buy a can of this stuff, it works perfectly.

I have to say, I'm really pleased with how it came out. There were a couple of squares that didn't align perfectly, but they were only off by millimetres, and the quilting lines are a bit wonky, but for a first attempt, I'm very pleased.

That's Andy behind there. I couldn't get a decent picture of it spread out on the floor so he's holding it up for me.

I went for straight line quilting on this one, but for the next one I think I'll try free motion. I prefer the look of it.

This took so long to do, but it was really worth it. It made the whole project look a lot more personal.

I chose pinks and blues because the 45th anniversary is sapphire

I have a Pinterest board with some great tutorials that I used here.