What Is The Biggest Mistake Made By Newcomers To Patchwork & Quilting?

Patchwork and quilting is an amazing hobby and allows you to express your creativity as wildly – or not – as you like. Looking at it from the outside can be very tempting: it’s a little like looking in the window of a sweet shop...so full of exciting flavours, colours and sensations and textures.

Watch below if you prefer to watch on YouTube, if not, read on for the blog.

Do you remember that from when you were a child? You dragged at your mum’s hand to be allowed to go IN to the hallowed sweet shop...except as soon as you stepped through the door, there was SOOOOO much choice, you either didn’t know what to choose...or wanted to choose everything in one go.

Then (if your mum let you) you chose bags of everything, went home and ate them all in one go – and...

Felt.....

Sick.

🤮

And probably, it was a while before you went back into that sweet shop again.

Me, I haven’t eaten liquorice since I was 8 for exactly that reason!

What’s this got to do with patchwork and quilting I hear you ask?

Too Much Choice!

Patchwork & quilting is our version of the sweet shop. So much choice, millions of variations, and you want to do everything all at once. I hear you!

Eye up a beautiful quilt, and you want to make it, before you’ve even cut and sewn your first patchwork piece.

The thing is, a whole quilt requires you to learn a whole set of skills. Not only that, each of those skills have lots of little hurdles to jump through and they get progressively bigger as your quilt grows.

The Biggest Mistake New Quilters Make

And this is the mistake that newbies make: they try and attempt a full size project fraught with potential issues, which can end up causing you frustration, overwhelm and just not knowing how to either avoid an issue or fix it if it happens.

And if THAT happens, you can feel sick and step away from your quilt and then patchwork and quilting altogether, sometimes never to return. It’s such a shame because this is a truly amazing hobby and one that I am genuinely passionate about.

The Solution?

Start with a small patchwork-only project like a cushion, and get to grips with those skills first. Then maybe make a couple of other cushions to start building your patchwork skills and repertoire.

Then take on a small quilted project like table mats, a pot holder or oven gloves to teach you the next set of skills.

Then you’ll have the basic skills to tackle a smaller quilt and you can start building from there.

So I hope that’s helped you to avoid this very common mistake and you now know to take simple steps into your wonderful new hobby.

Happy quilting!
Kim
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