Taking up all available floor space in my craft room, here’s the robot quilt sandwich – quilt top, cotton quilt batting, and the backing. I combined two fabrics from my pile of thrifted sheets to make the back.

I hand-basted the quilt sandwich with needle and thread. I was anticipating this would take a long time, but surprisingly, it only took me a couple of hours. The biggest challenge was basting the quilt layers together without basting it to the carpeting. We have very few non-carpeted surfaces in our house, and the few we have are not nearly big enough to accommodate this 5’x7′ quilt, so I had to make do with carpeting. Fortunately, I only sewed it to the carpeting in a few places. =)

Following the suggestion of the book from where this quilt pattern came, I used a long piece of wood (from a very unfinished shelving project) to mark a diagonal line across the quilt, then put a piece of masking tape next to that straight edge to mark my first quilting line. I rolled the two sides in towards the line so the quilt will fit through my little sewing machine. Next up: the actual quilting of My First Quilt!

Yay! Now for the next step – basting and quilting the quilt. First I have to figure out where to buy batting, though. And what fabric I want to use for the back. I have a feeling this is going to be the part of the process where I stall and get distracted by other projects, especially now that spring has sprung in Atlanta (hello, allergies!), and the weather when a quilt is appreciated is quickly vanishing.

I have to be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure about this robot quilt for the first few rows of blocks. Then his face appeared out of four blocks, and I was reassured that it is really cute.

I’ve decided to add one row of blocks to the bottom of the quilt. This will make the finished length about 7 feet long, instead of 6, which means I won’t have to worry about my feet sticking out of the end of the quilt, which is really the goal for me with any blanket/quilt/afghan. Current status: 22 of 35 blocks done!

Making progress – 9 of 30 blocks done (unless I decide to lengthen the quilt, in which case I’m only at 9 of 35 blocks done…). Toes shown for scale.

Over the past few months, I’ve been tossing around the idea of learning how to quilt (or rather, putting the random scraps of knowledge in my head into practice and seeing if a quilt results). Through a happy convergence of Christmas gifts, I now am the proud owner of a rotary cutter, a big ol’ cutting mat, and a heavy-duty Olfa sewing ruler. Which means, of course, that I am duly qualified for quilt-making (har). My challenge now is to figure out what to quilt.

After seeing a photo of a clever deer quilt from Dare to Be Square a few weeks ago, I checked out the book from the local library. The “picture” quality of the quilt got my wheels spinning, and I thought it’d be fun to make a robot quilt (my husband studying robotics and all). You probably know where this is going – Dare to Be Square has a robot quilt pattern! I was suitably excited.

The next day I had an idea for another quilt design, but my husband wisely suggested that maybe I should stick with a published pattern for my first attempt at a quilt… such wisdom. So I’ve started digging through my fabric stash and pulling out fabrics for My First Quilt, cutting some pieces as I go to get the hang of the rotary cutting method. Wish me luck!