I taught myself to quilt from a book. I had a decent portable sewing machine (which I still use) and a decent sewing background taught to me by my mom. I picked up this book in a quilting shop--recommended for beginners by the owner:
'Your First Quilt Book (or it should be)' by Carol Doak. This has a few projects in in, one of which is a baby quilt. She takes you step by step through choosing and preparing fabrics, cutting, piecing, quilting and finishing, and gives good instructions for both hand and machine methods all the way through...I think it was $25 but totally worth it!
I chose to make the baby quilt in the book by hand from start to finish (not even machine piecing). I like to do things like this because it gets me down to basics and really understanding the dynamics of things like how to get the corner points to match correctly, etc. It took a lot longer, but was worth it. Today I machine piece and hand quilt (so far).
If you choose to try hand quilting, I recommend that for your first project use a thin polyester batting, only because the needle slides through fairly easily, and you'll get the hang of it and won't be as frustrated. Cotton batting is really hard to quilt through!
I need to get back to sewing, I miss it. So now...back upstairs to clean up my miscellaneous crafting mess and make a space for my machine....
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