A Trunk Show - my first year of quilting

It's been a year since I returned home from a two-month trip with a hankering to learn to quilt and my first fat quarter bundle of fabric on my living room table.

Here is a trunk show of the 28 projects I made in the last year.

I started small. These 7" banners let me take my first steps in a space where enthusiam was way more important than perfection.

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I made my first quilt using precut 10" squares - an easy technique that I repeated multiple times over the year. Each of these projects moved me closer to straight seams and points matching up.

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As I gained confidence, I chose more complex projects - a colorful quilt for my sister, an improvisational quilt for my neighbor, and a found fabric quilt made from vintage ties.

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I've always wanted to understand color better. These two projects were useful - a complementary color quilt with red-violet/yellow-green and a colorwash quilt that moves from blue-violet to aqua to green.

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I love the idea of quilts for seasons. As summer was approaching, I made a light summer quilt out of Liberty fabric. With nearly 1,400 squares, it was my most ambitious quilt.

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I've been a storyteller all my life and the practice snuck into several quilts. My love for The Great British Bake Off inspired an homage quilt, my black and white quilt got the title "Which Fork Do I Use?", and my improvised window squares became a map to help me find my car.

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I was captivated by a quilt I saw in a video. There was no pattern so I used graph paper and an online app to recreate it in blues. Before I made it, I practiced half-square triangles so vigorously that I ended up with enough blocks to make a bonus quilt.

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When I realized my scrap drawer was full, I found a pattern and made my first scrap quilt. It turns out, projects that use scraps are very popular on YouTube. This is by far the most viewed quilt video on my channel.

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I made two wall hangings this year, both of them out of neccesity. Tula Pink's owl helped me obscure an unattractive view of the back of my dresser. And a pile of "orphan blocks" that had nowhere else to go found their place.

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And that is my quilting trunk show.

I am grateful I found quilting this year. The repetitive activity calms me. The visual creativity lights up my brain. The quilts themselves transform my living space into an art gallery. And I'm sleeping soundly in the embrace of my handiwork.

I can't recommend it enough.