My First Quilt, Part 2

Most of my sewing room decluttering attempts involve making scrappy quilts, but the quilt I'm making today has a slightly different story: yardage that was specifically set aside for a project.  Two years ago, I was looking for something in my sewing room and came across a bag with some fabric scraps and the pattern for the first quilt I ever made.  The feature fabric in that first quilt was elephant-themed and I instantly decided it would be fun to make that quilt again with some current elephant fabric.  So I hopped online and placed an order for some elephant and coordinating fabric.  But when it came, I was working on another project and it got placed in a bag, labeled, and set aside.  Fast forward to now when that fabric finally became a quilt!

The timeline for the two quilts is this:

• June 2011: I made the original quilt (with fabric from Joann's!)
• June 18, 2024: I ordered the fabric for the updated quilt
• June 20, 2026: I started the new version of the quilt

It would have been cool if I had started the quilt exactly two years after I bought the fabric, but I think it's equally as cool that the two quilts were made almost exactly 15 years apart!  You can read my thoughts about the original quilt here, but let's just say that having the correct tools, picking fabric at a better scale, and knowing what I was doing made a huge difference!

That poorly lit floor photo is the only photo I took of the original quilt (and I gifted it immediately so it is long gone).  I also quilted the current version myself instead of sending it out.  I've been in a bit of a FMQ rut lately, doing either a meander or sending out all of my quilts, so I decided to play with this one a little bit.  With the exception of the skinny borders, I ended up orange peeling everything.

It helped a lot that the boxes were already defined for the main squares, but I marked them for the background and border with my hera marker as well as marking the center of each square.  Then I eyeballed the curves with my free motion foot.  I was marking in sections and was actually a little disappointed when I realized that I was on the final section of the quilt, so I will have to come back to this pattern again soon - despite the marking, it's almost easier than meandering because you don't have to worry about the randomness of your stitching.

The same bag that had the fabric for the front also had a length of this navy print for the back.  After adding the scraps from the front, it was exactly the right size.  The binding is the same navy fabric that I used on the front of the quilt - past me did a pretty good job of buying fabric!

The pattern for this quilt is called Topsy Turvey and it looks like they are selling a "new version" of it now.  I don't know what's changed because I used my original copy to make it.  That's all for now - if you've re-made your first quilt, please tell me about it!