Choosing a favorite from every quilt you’ve made can feel like choosing between your children. So, naturally, we made our digital educators choose between them anyway.  

 “Ahhh! It is so hard to pick just one!” Jenna said. “I feel like I pour my entire being into most of the quilts I make.”  

Angelique took a whole week to stew on the question before she finally settled on a favorite. And Sabrina turned to the sentimental to answer our near-impossible question.  

So, what is it that makes a quilt a favorite quilt?  

For Jenna, it came down to expression. Her pick just felt so her. With this quilt, she created a reflection of herself. For Angelique, it was the fact that she made three different quilts from this same pattern. Two to give away—and because she loved them so much—one for herself. For Sabrina, it was the meaning behind the materials she used to piece it all together.  

 

This Quilt Just Screams Jenna!  

Jenna’s favorite quilt is the bright, scrappy quilt she made from the Felix Quilt pattern by Penelope Handmade.  

Like any quilt, making this one came with its highs and lows. She loved digging through her stash to choose from all the pink, yellow, and orange fabrics she already had (most of them ended up being from Ruby Star Society—her favorite). She didn’t buy any new fabric for this project, so it was basically free to make.  

On the flip side, her scrap-fabric strategy backfired when she got to the background fabric. She didn’t have enough for a couple of the squares, so she had to use smaller scraps to make franken pieces.  

 When she pieced her blocks together in the end, she accidentally pieced them together in a different order than she intended. Despite the road bumps, though, Jenna’s quilt turned out beautifully.  

A quilt doesn’t have to be perfect to be your favorite—in fact, the best quilts are rarely perfect.  

In the end, Jenna loves this quilt because it suits her tastes perfectly: bright, beautiful colors in a mishmash of coordinating patterns, tons of tiny scraps for a cute, complex designs, and the Criminal Minds she watched while quilting it probably didn’t hurt either (it’s her go-to for quilting background noise). 

 

Angelique’s Go-To Gifting Quilt 

Angelique has made her favorite quilt three times. The first time, she made it as a baby gift, and she didn’t follow the instructions at all. In a happy kind of accident, she ended up with extra fabric that she used to make an accompanying diaper or clothing holder. The perfect pairing for the baby quilt! Everyone who saw the quilt loved it. Angelique received so many compliments that when her husband’s annual work auction rolled around, she knew exactly what to make.  

In the second iteration of the tumbler quilt, Angelique did follow the directions. She used the same fabrics, but this time, she didn’t have any fabric left over (hey, sometimes winging it has some benefits).   

 After how much she enjoyed making the first two, and how much she loved the way they turned out, Angelique decided she needed one for herself too. This time, she chose a richer color palette with a mix of pastel and jewel tones, and she used minky for the backing. She still cuddles with it—even on the hottest days of the summer.  

 

Sabrina’s Sentimental Camp T-Shirt Quilt 

Sabrina has been collecting t-shirts from camps and clubs ever since she was a kid. She knew she’d never wear any of them again, but she didn’t just want to toss out clothes that held so many memories. So—naturally, being a quilter—Sabrina decided to turn all the shirts into a quilt. That way, she could keep her shirts, and put them to good use.  

She decided she wanted her t-shirts to stand out more than a quilt pattern where each shirt would just be checkered against the next, so she used a white Jelly Roll to help each individual shirt stand out. She’d almost finished the quilt when she started her first semester of college and had to leave it behind at her parents’ house several states away.  

In Thanksgiving, Sabrina went home for a surprise visit, but she was the one who ended up surprised. Her mother had finished the quilt for her, and she used some out-of-print fabric left over from Sabrina’s first-ever quilt to do it. 

This quilt was a labor of love from start to finish, and Sabrina loves that her mother helped make it even more special.  

 

Quilts are made to distill memories, to give away to those we love, or just for the sake of making them. It’s hard to predict the quilts that will stick with us as our favorites, and so many reasons why they might. Take this moment to show off your favorite quilt, snuggle up with it, or maybe to start a new quilting project that just might turn out to be your favorite quilt one day. Every quilt you start has the potential to be your best quilt yet!