It all started with a search for a car blanket in 2011. On our second date, my boyfriend (now husband) and I went to an outdoor theater production in a replica Globe Theater. Before the show started we went on a mini adventure driving around the tiny town in search of a new car blanket because his current blanket was old and full of holes from too many moves. We ended up renting a blanket that night to keep warm while watching the show, but I tucked away our conversation for a later date. A few month later, I started looking for a car blanket to buy him for Christmas. I struggled with my search because the blankets I was looking at seemed so expensive. I couldn't believe how much they wanted to charge for what amounted to a few pieces of fabric.  I laugh at my thoughts from back then as there's no way I could have known how much this first quilt would end up costing me over the years in quilting supplies and fabric. I already owned a sewing machine, and when I was younger I had made a few blankets from two panels of flannel sewn together around the edges and flipped inside out and a few tied fleece blankets for friends. So how hard could it be to make a car blanket?

I went to the fabric store and looked at the fleece. It was way more expensive than I wanted to pay. I rethought my plan. If I bought some of the less expensive cotton fabrics and put them together on the front, then I could put the flannel fabric on the back and it would be a cozy car blanket. I went to the internet and asked Google to show me some easy quilt blocks. After looking at quite a few patterns, I settled on the snowball block because it looked to be the easiest one I could make.

My next step was to call up my grandma and speak with her about what supplies I needed for my first quilt. She was the only one I knew who quilted, and she quilted a lot. Her response was: Get a rotary cutter, a rotary cutting mat, and a ruler. Also, make sure you have some paper for drawing out your design. These are the absolute basics you will need to make a quilt. I already had the paper so that was easy. I drew out my design and counted how many blocks I would need, and  then used a quilting calculator app on my phone to determine how much fabric I would need to purchase. Then I was off to the fabric store to pick up my supplies. The O'lipfa Lip Edge ruler was 18" long and seemed like the perfect choice for me. If you aren't familiar with it, the ruler has a lip on the end that is supposed to rest on the edge of the cutting mat and can be used like a t-square to make straight cuts. I brought everything home and started cutting out my blocks. After cutting about half of my squares, I  saw that they were not nearly as uniform as they should have been considering I lined up the ruler on the edge of the mat for every cut I made. I called my grandma and asked her what I was doing wrong. Grandma explained that to get straight lines, you rip the fabric into strips instead of cut the fabric into strips and that will give you a straight line to start with. Then, you take a quilting square, and cut your squares from that. You can also use the quilting squares to square up the blocks once they are cut. She also told me, get the bigger square so you can use it on more sizes. I went back to the store and purchased the Omnigrid 12.5" square. The rest of my squares were much more uniform but I was running out of fabric and I could only square up so many of my original cut squares, so I powered through the process and ended up with a quilt top that matched up on some rows, but were completely off on others. Once the top was done I made yet another call to my grandma to have her explain how I should put the quilt together. She explained two methods: sewing around the edges, turning it inside out, and then tying every so often to keep the quilt together; and the other method which involved putting the layers together, quilting from the center out, and then binding the quilt. I went with the easier method of sewing around the edges and then tying the quilt. When I gifted the quilt to my then boyfriend, he told me, "I love it, but there's no quilting on it and your blocks are a little wonky in some spots. Also, since there is only room for one person under this quilt, you'll have to go sit somewhere else, because this one is mine." During this conversation I found out that I knew two quilters: my grandmother and his mother.

Throughout all of my fumbling through learning how to quilt, I gained so much pleasure from the process and the end result. I loved the math aspect of quilting, and the fact that I finally felt like an artist. For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be artistic. I was never much of a drawer, or a painter, or a sculptor, or pretty much anything artistic, until I started quilting. I realized that quilting quenched that artistic yearning in me. I had finally found my medium. The unspoken challenge thrown down after my first quilt was to make a quilt that was large enough for two people, where the pieces matched up, and there was actual quilting. Because of my struggle with cutting uniform squares, I decided that my next quilt was going to be something much easier; a hexagon quilt. When I explained my newest plan to my boyfriend he laughed and told me good luck, almost as if he knew something I didn't know...