Teach a Boy to Quilt

Happy Australia Day! Such perfect weather to head into the city for the Maritime Festival to watch the old planes do tricks and take photos of quilts. There was even tug boat ballet!

Late last year my 5 yr old Tully asked if I could teach him to sew his very own bed quilt.
"Even the cutting, ok, Mum?" Ok!
I let him raid my stash and scraps and he straight away chose many of my Sarah Jane prints, and other blue, teal and green prints, with a healthy splattering of red, orange and yellow. It was so wonderful and amazing to see him drawn to the different prints and colours, not just the 'boy' ones, and grow a colour selection that was really cohesive.

Sewing a single bed quilt with a child is a big assignment, but we made it manageable and enjoyable by giving him a taste of each stage. When he got bored, he'd tell me he'd had enough and ask me to keep going. And so I did. It kept each step coming at a pace he enjoyed and stopped his interest from waning. After not insisting on him completing it all, it's a joy to hear him tell people that he made his quilt!

After sewing all our 5" squares together in blocks of four, I decided on Maureen's Quilt as You Go method because it keeps the quilt in smaller pieces for longer. I started with a fun zig-zag free motion quilting design before I realised that was going to take me till the rest of the year! This simple diagonal line was much faster and still effective when matched with the quilting we did 1/4" on either side of the seams once the whole quilt was together.
We decided on this Ikea Britten Nummer print for the back. A new favourite of mine!

And today we came to the Newcastle Foreshore to take photos and enjoy the Australia Day celebrations. Tully stood so proudly next to his creation. You can see from these photos that we added an Out to Sea Map near the top right and a little signature "T" in the bottom left corner, just for fun.

After sewing the last stitch on the binding, Tully grabbed it, wrapped it around him and ran through the yard in a kind of victory lap. Hurray! I'm so thankful for opportunities such as these!