Wednesday, April 21, 2010

My First Quilt




I came upon this blog a few months ago from a link my friend Emily posted. I found a tent there that I wanted to sew for my kids. Well, I was feeling in the crafty mood one day last week, and decided it was time to finally make a tent for the girls. Lets just say I'm now a little distracted from making a tent and am set on making my first quilt ever. All I know how to sew is straight lines, so hopefully this is just right up my alley. Care at Obsessively Stitching is running this series, and I get so antsy every day waiting for the next instructions on the quilt. It is so exciting for me, and I love making and creating things lately (I think it makes me feel like a little bit of a better mom). I honestly am disappointed each day when I have no new instructions on what to do for my quilt.

I took Kiya to the fabric store on Saturday to pick out the fabrics for her quilt. We had a great outing and spent over a good hour picking out fabric. I tried to get her to pick some pinks and purples or something similar but she was set on the yellow with ladybugs. There was nothing I could do to persuade her decision, so I spent forever trying to find 9 other fabrics that would match. Finally I ended up with classic primary colors, when I first got them home and started cutting out I was a little worried that I wouldn't like them together, but now I think they will look great together.

I was almost done cutting a got a little bit careless and cut 2 of the squares 5" instead of 6". It just so happened that that particular fabric ended up with about 2 inches extra, so instead of going and buying another cut of fabric I just sewed my 5" piece and 2" piece together and made a 6" square out of that. Hopefully this doesn't bother me later on. If it does I guess I will just have to deal with it.
And here's where I started getting really excited. Sewing the squares together, and guess what it was super easy. Care's suggestion of joining the blocks together in a chain is great. Maybe that is a commonly known thing among quilters, but I think it is a fabulous thing to know.

Then putting all the nine square blocks together. I decided that I should have picked more than 3 colors. It was quite difficult to not get the same colors next to each other. Now I'm wondering if it will be even more difficult after I cut the squares and have to rearrange them again. More to come again later after further instruction from Care.