2020 in Quilt

I did it.

Oh my god.

I finished it.

I finished my 2020 quilt.

In January of 2020, I started a journal quilt. At the start of each month I wrote a few sentences about how I felt in that moment, and then I would illustrate it by cutting out and assembling images from my stack of collage-fodder magazines and books. From that picture, I would base my quilt square using fabric and embroidery.

Of course, when I decided to document each month of my year, I had no idea that 2020 was going to be... 2020. So this otherwise average journal wound up being a record of the first year of living in quarantine and the first of the now annual forest fires that drown Portland in smoke. But it's also a record of the first lemon crop I ever grew, so the year wasn't all bad!

Even though I finished making the quilt squares by January 2021, I had no idea how you're supposed to go about joining them all together and making them into an actual quilt, so they sat neglected for a good long while.  

Until my friend Clare came to visit in 2022 and she showed me how to figure out the next bit.

 Unfortunately, Clare only visited for a weekend and she lives on the East Coast, so once I finished sewing all the top pieces together I, again, had no idea how to proceed. So I sat on it for another couple years until 2024 until I had an epiphany when I met an instructor named Epiphany at a Sincere Studio sewing class. She very generously walked me through the steps of adding the middle and back layers, and how they get sewn (quilted) together.

 I picked out this sheet from Goodwill to be my quilt's back, and I think almost all the white parts are an old Ikea curtain. PRO TIP: Do not use Ikea curtains for your sewing projects, they are transparent as eff. Other fabrics I re-purposed in the quilt: Matt's t-shirt, a translucent scarf I bought at a yard sale for like $2, and my worn out underwear that was too cute to throw away.

 And here we are! Started in 2020, finished in 2025! 100% hand sewn!

 If you actually have experience quilting, I'm sure this is painful to look at, but you know what? I had no idea what I was doing and I got it done! Oh wait, I'm literally right now realizing I forgot to sew down one of the edges of a quilt square. I just noticed it in that photo right above this writing, the one showing the backside. It's the top left square. Well! Guess I've got a little bit more to do. But other than that, it's basically turned out okay! Hella rumply and uneven but, ey, it's my first quilt. It's artistic.

Each individual panel is uploaded into this post's image carousel, if you wanna go check 'em out closer! 

Signing (sewing?) off,

-Erika