Guess what I did on Saturday afternoon, while the rain poured down outside and hubby took the girls to the library?  A couple of my friends came over, with a mission – to learn how to do patchwork.  Luckily for me and my friend Jane, Megan not only knows how to do patchwork and quilting, she even used to teach it!  My first effort is this square, a Churn Dash block.

Megan is a brilliant teacher.  She showed us examples of the quilts she had made, and we talked a lot about the use of colour and shade, as well as pattern and proportion.  She taught us how to use the rotary cutter and ruler properly, how to piece correctly, and the importance of accuracy in both cutting and piecing.  I did this second block the next day, and I can tell that it isn’t as accurate.

Although I’ve managed to get points and seams to meet, I’ve taken too large a seam allowance when sewing the rectangular pieces together.  It will be interesting to see if I can accomodate it when I eventually piece together a quilt.

My plan at the moment is to continue making more of these blocks whenever I have the inclination.  The light fabric is just calico, since that was what I had on hand as a plain (my stash is chockablock full of prints with hardly any plains) and I’ll just use scrap prints.  Practice will hopefully eventually make perfect, and then Megan can give us a lesson on sashing, binding, then quilting!  I can already see how people become addicted.

While I had Megan’s handy 6 inch square ruler, I cut out some 4 inch squares from small amounts of Liberty prints that I had in my stash to add to the ones that Ravenhill sent me.

Any suggestions to how to incorporate these into a quilt would be gratefully received – what blocks might be good?  How could I best arrange them?  What fabrics and/or colours should I combine them with?

Thanks again Megan – you’re not only a brilliant friend, you’re also a superb and patient teacher!  And a funny little side note – my Mum is currently learning how to do patchwork too, but she is paying someone in a lovely patchwork shop to teach her.  Whereas I have Megan – my own personal tutor!