quilted sewing kit

Confession, I have a box full of baby clothes in a closet that I am keeping with the plans of making a quilt with all the sweet little outfits that I can't bear to part with. This would be a perfect idea except for the fact that I have never made a quilt in my life, have no idea where to start and a lot of the fabrics involved are knit or fleece which means its not going to be the most straighforward quilt in the world to make!


Last year I spent a bit of time thinking about the logistics of how I'm going to make this quilt and during my research I came across english paper piecing. The idea of this type of quilting appealed to me since a) I'm not a fan of sitting at a sewing machine for hours and hours and b) I think it will be nice to handwork all these special fabrics which hold so many memories. So for my birthday I asked for this book.

I cannot say enough great things about this book, it is beautiful to read regardless of whether you are intending to ever sit down and do any english paper piecing. The pictures of all the projects are stunning and the directions made me think that even with my limited sewing skills I could possibly, one day, sit down with my baby clothes and make something beautiful with them!


Before I did that however I thought it might be a good idea to try and make one or two of the projects in the book to get some practice with the technique, see if I could do it and if I enjoyed it. This little sewing kit is my first attempt and I have to say that it was actually fun, and both easier and faster than I was expecting it to be!

For this kind of quilting you make little paper templates and then baste your fabric around them (this project didn't require a whole lot of fabric so I went through what I had lying around and picked fabrics from there). 

All the little hexagons (or whatever shape/pattern you are making) then get whipstitched together and the paper templates are removed. 

Then you quilt like normal, I quilted mine exactly as they showed in the book (since this is the first time I've ever quilted anything!) with these little triangles which turned out really nicely.

And finally, ta da... the final mini sewing kit bound with binding which I also made using instructions in the book. All in all I can say I am so happy with how this turned out and am already planning my next project (and maybe even tentatively starting to think about how that quilt is going to go!).