I’m still very much a newbie when it comes to quilting, ok I’ve finished two quilts and I’ve another two tops waiting to be quilted, but they are pretty basic patterns, all squares or rectangles with the occasional triangle if I’m feeling brave! Until a couple of months ago I’d not even heard of a BOM quilt; BOM stands for Block of the Month. A pattern is released each month by the designer for a new block, by the end of the year you have a quilt, only the finished design is a surprise…It’s a good way of learning new techniques without having to do a whole quilt of them!

I decided to start a BOM quilt by Pat Sloan, she has a website, blog and also a facebook page. Facebook interest groups are another new experience for me, I’m on two now, Pats and also one from Caroline’s Sew Can She blog, it’s great to have a circle of contacts who will enthuse over material, suggest ideas, encourage and inspire each other…it also means my facebook page is filled with lovely photos of quilts!

A list of fabric requirements is given but I’m just using my stash, so I’ve put together a  group of fat quarters which will hopefully work. The leaf design and the amber fabric were my starting point. I’m still not sure about the two light blue fabrics, but I’d quite like to incorporate them a bit as I’d like to use them for the backing too, I’ve got rather a lot of them and I’ve had them for years!! I’m hoping to use the William Morris fabric for the sashing, as looking at the outline of the design, there’s several short sashes, so I can use different stripes of the fabric. That’s the plan anyway…

The first block is a star design. We had the choice of either making it with flying geese or half triangles. As I’ve never done flying geese before I decided to give it a go. The instructions are really clear and easy to follow, with lots of photographs to illustrate the techniques. There’s also a video if you prefer.

Judging by comments on facebook, getting the points neat is the important thing with flying geese, mine aren’t perfect, but they’re not bad, I’m pretty pleased with my first attempt!

Block 2 was published this afternoon, it’s a heart design with flying geese again, so hopefully my points will improve with practice! Watch this space…