My First Quilt - Part 1 (Selecting the Pattern and Fabric)

Last September, I somehow decided to try quilting. My plan was to start very slowly, following instructions in a book, and make a practice quilt. Then, I was going to make a baby quilt for my 1st niece before she was born. Well, the day after I bought the fabric for the "practice" quilt, we found out that Hailey was most likely going to be born early, so I needed to speed up the process. As a result, the practice quilt is still just fabric in my basement, and Hailey's quilt has a lot of beginner's errors associated with it.

Step 1: Choose a Pattern
I searched for "easy baby quilts" on google, and eventually settled on this pattern. A "baby quilt" is usually very small, and I wanted Hailey to be able to use the quilt when she got older, too, so I decided to convert the pattern to a larger quilt size myself. This was beginner's mistake number 1. I didn't quite do the math for the backing correctly and was a little short on fabric when I got to that point. Also, I just now found the full size version of the same pattern, which would have made it a lot easier for me.

The pattern itself isn't that difficult, but since I had absolutely no experience quilting, it was a little over my head. It basically just had the instructions for the top piece, and figured that I knew how to turn it into a quilt from there. So, beginner's mistake number 2 was to assume that instructions that fit on two sheets of paper (including diagrams) could teach me all that I needed to know about quilting. Luckily, I had the book I had purchased for the practice quilt as well as the Internet to fill in the holes of my pattern.

Step 2: Choose the Fabric
The pattern called for three different fabrics: a dark tone-on-tone, a medium tone-on-tone, and a light print. When I went to the fabric store, I was looking for pink and purple fabrics, but I ended up with contrasting purple and yellow.
Stay tuned for the rest of the story!

Supplies Needed:

• Pattern
• Three types of fabric