1962 Revisited (My First Quilt, Reworked)

I eased into quilting by learning hand-quilting from my church youth group leader when I was 17. A couple of years later, when I was in college and living in my own little converted garage apartment, I decided to make the same quilt with the scraps left over from my sewing projects. The quilt we had quilted was a glorified 9-patch, hand-pieced, so I thought mine had to be hand-pieced, too. (It never occurred to me that perhaps a glorified 9-patch might not be the best beginner quilt.) I put it together and used polyester batting, polyester thread, and fabrics that were cotton, polyester and poly-cotton blends. Over the years, the batting wore out the backing, the background and some of the fabrics in the blocks, and the polyester thread cut through the cotton fabrics. I was broken-hearted, but I refused to throw it away. It depressed me for years. Finally, in 2002, I separated the layers, removed the background fabric, and began replacing the block and background fabrics that had worn out. When it was put back together again, with cotton batting this time, I hand-quilted it as before. It now has a label that tells its story. I call it "1962 Revisited."