My 1st Quilt...

This was fun!

I have been needing a break form SWAP sewing, so I've been doing a couple side projects to keep things interesting.  I have a month left for SWAP... I hope I get my SWAP mojo back soon, so I can finish in time...

Anyway, so I was surfing projects on JoAnn's.com site and came across two quilts that I was interested in.  Showed them to DH and he picked the Patchwork Throw.  Project is Here.

So, off to JA's to look for 7-8 cotton prints to make up my quilt.  I had a purple tie dye fleece in stash for the backing.  So, started finding some prints, but it wasn't coming together quite right at first.  The I found and awesome Tea Bag Tag print. How cute was that. so it didn't really work in with the purples/pinks/blues that I was selecting, but as I was going down, looking around, I found some butterflies (my new fancy) that went with the teabags, soon enough my quilt was taking on a brownish tones theme.  So be it. Anti-pill was on sale for 40% off anyway, what's 1 1/2 yds of brown going to cost? :-)

Home and washing everything....Drying... All ready to start tomorrow morning..

So, started by cutting strips in each of the 8 pieces of 1/2 yd prints.  They said to vary the widths.... Okay.... Let me say the rotary-cutter was an essential tool for this project.  The pattern called for scissors, but no way.  Rotary-cutter and yardstick for straightedge.  I still had to cut the remaining 6 inches from the width of each strip that went off the 36" cutting mat and 36" yardstick. but that was no problem.

Okay, then once all strips are cut (I made 4", 5", 6", 8")  Next time I might lose the 5" - Too  subtle of a width change.  Then I had to cut them all into thirds.

Then Make 4 equal piles - Now not knowing any better, I divide the 84 pieces I had by 4, and made 4 piles of 21 pieces.  However, now I know to strategize the sizing of the pieces, because if I have 10 pieces of 4" strips vs 10 pieces of 6" strips, you can see where I have 1 really long strip and one much shorter strip.  It wasn't too bad how I ended up, but just something to make a note of for next time.  I would have been able to make a larger quilt.

All Done with my stacks.

Now sew each pile long sides together to end up with 4 long pieces with stripes of the fabric pieces.  Start at 10:00

All 4 strips sewn and ironed front and back. (seams flat)

Now, Need to cut these wide strips into smaller strips of differing widths.  You can see how the strips are differing lengths.  Not terrible, but that was the counting of the pieces I was mentioning before of selecting the 21 pieces, not paying attention to each piece's size.  Maybe that would be too nit picking anyway, not sure...

Okay, so the pattern called for 1 1/2 yds of fleece for the backing.  see how short we are?  So I had to run to JA and get more.  At first I figured I had to get a whole new piece because of the seam factor of piecing together, so I got the bolt, got my number, and as I always do, I walked over to the remnants bin to peek around.  You will not believe what was in there!  1.4 yds of Brown Anti-pill! So it was 90% off.  (40% +50% remnant) No brainer, right?  Scooped that up, put the number back and the bolt back, and hit the register, grabbing up a Reese's candy on the way.

Threw that in the wash, while i proceeded to cut the new strips and surveyed my progress, and strategy for final sew-up.

Marked my matching points, and started pinning and sewing...

Folded the piece twice and trimmed all up squared off so I had one perfect rectangle piece.

Meanwhile I had sewn the two pieces of fleece together for the backing.  Now lay the final piece on the backing

Trimmed and folded over the sides for about a 3-3 1/2" border around the centerpiece.  We sewed this up.

Now we quilt the backing to the prints.  Being my first quilt, I merely did huge squares that the pattern called for.  I did a pretty good job keeping them straight.  And don't you know - that seam form piecing the two fleeces together  I used that as a guide for one of my quilting lines, so no one is the wiser at all that there was a piece together!  Kewl, huh?

Wahlah!

Quilt measures 83 x 48.

Project all told was approximately 8 hours of sewing/crafting time, and took two days.

Cheers!

-JDol