Quilting: story of a hobby

I've long thought about how tackle my sewing on the blog. Making a short blog post every time I do something seems boring and tedious so its out of the question. Also there's not too much to write about each project and I don't wanna just squeeze words onto a page for the sake of the post. So this pot is gonna be about my quilting journey as whole rather than the projects I do along the way.

Quilting is a hobby I picked up a few years ago. I've seen it on the internet for a while and I knew what it was just didn't feel up to doing it. Than one day I thrifted a winter coat I really liked - with the exception of the big flower on it. So I was looking for something to cover it with. I got the idea to pick apart this old broken backpack I had. It was made of these really nice contrasting textured fabrics and I figured a monochrome quilt out of those would look really cool and could hide that flower on my coat. It worked perfectly, I even integrated some of the hardware of the bag in it.

Trying on the coat at the second hand shop

The original design of the coat. I wans't bad, just not my style.

Okay, now this is better

The quilted coverup. This is before I ironed it...and ruined my iron. So excuse the wrinkles. I was too lazy to take a new pic.

Then for a while I didn't really think I'll find another quilting project...until I worked up the courage to purge my wardrobe of dysphoria inducing clothes. In the process I also pulled out things that were worn down to rags and stuff I could never realistically ever fit in again (how was I ever so skinny!?), I donated most of what was good and wearable. Despite that I still was left with a bag of stuff that you can't really donate anymore. It felt wrong to throw it away. But what could I do with it?

CUT MY CLOTHES INTO PIECES. THIS IS MY LAST RESORT! - okay, that joke was bad and I'm aging myself. But yes, that's what I decided to do with them. Figured out that I'd like to work with 10cm squares (cut to 12cm) and 5cm (cut to 7cm). I initially tried measuring and marking my lines. that worked on the more stiff fabrics, but other fabrics just moved around too much. So I made cardboard patterns that sorta act like a clamp. I clamp the fabric in it and cut on the sides. Sometimes I can even fold the fabric so I get more squares at once.

The blanket desing I settled for

Then I counted my colors and came up with a design and started working from the middle of it outside. My project was to be a duvet cover but I quickly realized that because of the different fabrics it had weird structure issues. So instead I'm just gonna sew the two faces together and make a blanket. At the time I'm typing this intro the first face is completely done. It took me about a year with breaks of inactivity. The second one is a work in progress, this will take way less time cause the middle part I'm using a big piece of tartan I have. It felt stupid to cut it into squares and resew it.

First completed face of the blanket.

The sketch for the second face of the blanket, featuring that big piece of tartan

Meanwhile I also made a small quilted pillow that I filled with fabric scraps that can't be used other wise. My first design was way too floppy and heavy so I got rid of the sides and made it smaller. It's still too floppy. The fabric has no structure. So I will make an "inside" from a a stronger material I have, open up the pillow, fill the new inside with the scraps and then cover it. Maybe I'll even add a a zipper or buttons to make the pillow washable.

First version of the pillow looked more like a cat bed but the cat didn't want it.

It got sad. Can't handle rejection well.

Second version. Better, but still lumpy and sad.

I love quilting so much, aside from the cathartic cutting of clothes that made me uncomfortable, I also love that I's a good way to recycle fabric, I get to stab something a billion times, it's creative but also very repetitive. It's basically a stim. But my favorite thing is that once I get my stuff pinned together I can lay in bed, watch tv and sew without looking at what I do.

Look at me being productive!

I already have plans for another two projects...well...more. But I'll post about them as I go. I'll update this post with pictures of the finished results and maybe some progress shots too.

To be continued...