My first real quilting experience

My mother-in-law, Joleen, is visiting from Washington state this weekend. Yea! She happened to bring some fabric with her, so in the last TWO days we have each made a bag (I made a bag for Cleod to carry his piano books in) one table runner and almost a topper for a quilt that will someday be Cora's.

Joleen taught me this fun and random way of quilting. You sew strips, end to end. Here is the long strip for a table runner to go on my piano. (The fabric is left over from some pillows my mom made me.)

Then, you bring the bottom up and sew the sides together. In the case of the runner, we divided the strip into 3 pieces and sewed them together.
Front and back of runner before final sewing.
Finished runner for piano. Love it! I'm so happy with it!

As Joleen ironed and cut, I sewed. Here I am sewing strips together for the quilt. You can see the pile of fabric strips on the floor. It seemed like FOREVER, but it came together quite nicely.

Pile of sewn strips.
Joleen had another pack of the same fabric that was cut in triangles, so we decided to use those for a border.
After a quick trip to the fabric store and several hours of sewing, here is the quilt progress after Day 2.

Now that I know what I'm doing (sort of), I am going to take a break. I have a good idea of how to finish the front, but I need to pick a backing and then get it quilted. It won't be really soon, but I am so excited to have a nice, old-fashioned-looking quilt for Cora to enjoy someday that was made by her mom and her Grandma Aitchison.