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My First Quilt

By Jess
Well, that's not strictly true. It IS the first quilt that I made following some semblance of instructions about to execute a quilted square. Previously, I had madly scribbled a pinwheel pattern on the back of a church bulletin, and despite the seemingly divine inspiration I forged ahead with no knowledge of how to properly cut a square, much less how to measure and cut and sew a properly-sized triangle. I digress.

I did make the potholder you see here as a sort of tutorial project on piecing and binding, inspired by these beauties here at one of my new favorite "happy blogs". I love her palette and the colors and bright white make me smile. She's even doing a crazy give-away to celebrate her 100th post, including some of her lovely handmade things and beautiful fabric squares. Check it out!

(Just yesterday, she posted a tutorial on making rick-rack napkins. The rick-rack I could take or leave, but it's a nifty idea and probably a better use of my small linen squares than tediously hemming each one.)

*ahem* I digress, once again. Without further ado, the potholder:

 
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Clearly, that log cabin would not be structurally sound, and I didn't understand at all how to close the binding (though the mitered corners were super easy!). The binding was MUCH too narrow, despite what I thought to be an exaggerated width to start, so that mistake gives me something to work from, too. It's about 7" square, easily an inch smaller than I expected it to be, so I'll have to double-check my math. All in all, I'm pretty pleased.

The disappointing thing is how very many potholders one could make from what I thought to be small pieces of fabric! Stay tuned....

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