A quilt in two days!

It's an alluring claim isn't it? One that had me hooked as soon as it jumped out at me while browsing through the prospectus for my local adult education centre. Naturally, I wasted little time and booked my place on a course that promised to teach me the entire art of quilting in 48 hours. Prior to the start of the course I was sent  a list of things to bring along on the first day. Ever the eager student, I bought lots of lovely fabric, gathered my sewing kit together, shined my shoes and turned up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ready to make a quilt.

The reality (isn't that just one of the most depressing words in the English language?) is that the quilt took a little longer than two days to make. Nevertheless, the course introduced me to the wonders of fast piecing techniques, and in particular, the magical properties of half, and quarter square triangles. Once you've mastered the really quite simple art of these, you'll look at quilting in an entirely new light. I'm so smitten with the technique, I feel it's too good to keep to myself so will share it with you, by way of a mini tutorial, in another post.

Indeed this wonderful technique enabled me to make my hourglass quilt, which technically is the first quilt I ever made, because although started two years after My First Quilt (MFQ) it was actually completed eighteen months before MFQ! Like much of my early attempts at patchwork and quilting it's far from perfect; the quilting is done without a quilter's foot, and, rather than being in the ditch, drunkenly wavers from one side of the bank to the other. In total, the quilt probably took 3 1/2 days to complete but the course was a great introduction to fast piecing patchwork techniques.

The finished quilt is now draped over a beaten up leather armchair, which Willow, our cat has claimed as her own. The quilt is covered in cat hair and muddy paw prints. I do wonder if a cat's purpose in life is to sneer at the efforts humans make to improve themselves and their surroundings, or is it just my cat that does this?