When my husband and I bought our first house, my mother-in-law made us each a quilt. She spent countless hours on those quilts so that we would know how much she cared. She has become a more central part of our lives over the past few years, and with that involvement has come many more quilts, both for our babies and for us.

I moved to Utah from Canada when I was 15. My grandmother let me take my favorite quilt from her house in my hometown. A new city, school, and friends made the first few months difficult, but having that quilt as a reminder of her love made the transition a little easier.

A quilt is warm and comforting. A quilt is soft and cozy. A quilt is pattern and imperfections. A quilt is patience, time and love. In an attempt to follow in the footsteps of my children’s grandmother and my own grandmother, I decided to try my hand at making a quilt of my very own!

Picking the fabric was my favorite part of the process. So much flannel, so few prints needed for my quilt! My kids did not find fabric shopping to be enjoyable, but if I had been alone, I might have spent all afternoon in the store! My background in hairstyling made me brave enough to choose the orange ‘pop’ of color. Orange and blue are opposite on the color wheel- hence, they compliment each other fabulously!

Next, I had to cut the fabric into squares. This step had to be quite precise. I needed 6.5’’ squares of fabric, and 5.5’’ squares of fleece for the lining.

After I had cut the fabrics and fleece, I needed to make them into ‘sandwiches’ and lay them out into the formation for the quilt.

I’ll admit, I’ve been having some trouble getting all the settings right on my new-ish machine, so every time I start a project, I get a little nervous that it’ll act up. No problems on this project, luckily! First, I sewed each square to the next square in the row sequence, then I sewed each row to the next row in the row sequence until I had a complete rectangle!

The edges were rough, so I squared them up with my rotary cutter and mat. Next, I needed to make little cuts in each seam so that the flannel fabric would fray when washed.

The finished product is cozy and my babies love it! Since the ‘inner’ squares of fleece (meant to make the quilt warmer) did not get sewn to the outer squares, they shifted when the quilt was washed. Live and learn, I suppose. You can tell that each square has a little ‘lump’ in it, but I just call it character!

This project, like almost every creative task I’ve undertaken, was a learning process. I would do things differently if I did it again, but I am now confident that I could take on bigger quilts, or even different types of quilts in the future. Being able to talk to my grandmother and mother-in-law about the process of sewing and creating has been beneficial to our relationships. I feel closer to them by learning their craft.