quilt!

I've been working on a new quilt.  I wouldn't call myself a quilter, but I've made two quilts (without any sort of real clue about what I was doing).  My first, in 2008 was made out of scraps of fabric from other sewing projects (mostly skirts I'd sewn) and consisted of simple squares.  I was inspired to try it after getting a lesson in using a rotary cutter during a trip to visit my parents.  Here is my finished quilt folded on the back of Dovey's favorite chair here at the farm:

It's pretty small and should really be called a patchwork blanket because it's not quilted at all, but I still love it.

I made the second quilt last winter.  Here's a photo of the finished quilt top draped across the sofa at my house in Cleveland:

And the finished quilt folded on the loveseat on the upstairs landing here at the farm:

(Yep, I used leftover fabric from that quilt to make a couple things in my etsy shop).

I love having blankets around and enjoy making crocheted blankets and quilts, too.  It's really comfy to curl up on that loveseat and pile on the quilt and those crocheted blankets.  I have visions of some day having piles and stacks of quilts and crocheted blankets, maybe in a pretty, white painted, glass front cabinet or draped on a quilt ladder or in a basket, or, or, or...

The other day I mentioned that I was cutting out fabric for a new quilt.  I'd been saving this fabric to make a quilt since last winter.  I bought a variety of prints from Amy Butler's Love line (watch her Love video, it's really fun) when I was on a roll with the blues and greens quilt (also Amy Butler fabric.  Yep, I love her).  I thought I'd maybe make a quilt with hexagons, kind of like the free downloadable pattern on Amy Butler's website, but then I decided to go with squares and rectangles.  I had eight fabrics for the top of the quilt and my plan was to slowly work my way through cutting the fabrics two prints a day.  I think I stuck to that plan for the most part.  And then I spent some time thinking.  I cut sixteen large squares (two of each pattern) and 64 rectangles (eight of each pattern) and figured that I would make sixteen blocks each with a center square surrounded by the long, skinny rectangles.  I had to figure out how to arrange all of those pieces after cutting them because I had no plan from the beginning.  After a couple sketches and a few sessions of laying the fabric on the ground and on the guest room bed, I came up with a pleasing arrangement.

I'd never made a quilt with actual blocks before and I'd never used white in a quilt before, but this time I wanted all of my blocks surrounded by white (not knowing much about quilts, I didn't know that surround would be called "sashing").  After coming up with my pattern the next step was sewing each block.  What a fun and manageable way to put together a quilt!  Again, my plan was to break the process down so I could work on other things and not have the quilt be my main focus.  I would make two blocks a day.  Here's my first block:

It took a little figuring because I wasn't sure how to sew all the overlapping bits (I'm serious when I tell you I don't know what I'm doing), but I figured it out and got a rhythm going.  Here are my first two blocks:

Well... my plan quickly derailed and I became obsessed with putting together my blocks.  And then once all sixteen were finished I just had to figure out how to do the sashing and sew all of that, too.  Here's an in-process shot with Dovey helping (she cannot stay away when fabric is on the floor):

I finished the quilt top yesterday:

 

Each of the blocks is about 10 inches; the sashing is 1 inch and the border is 4 inches.  I guess that makes the entire quilt about 54 inches square (if my math is correct; my brother is the math teacher, not me).  It's hard to photograph a quilt.  I dream of being able to hang my quilts on the clothesline and photograph them that way.  Until then, here are a couple more photos taken when I pinned it to the wall:

 

Not the best, but you get the idea.

I am so excited with how it turned out!  Now I just have to get the back finished and put it together.  I have another fabric from the Love line for a majority of the back and plan to make a simple pieced back.  Maybe just two stripes of the patterned fabric and a stripe of white.  Maybe something a little more complicated.  We'll see.  I'm also not sure how I'm going to put it all together.  Will I follow quilting rules (as I've heard them from my mom) and quilt first?  Or will I sew it all together like I did with my first two quilts and decide to quilt or not to quilt afterward?  I'll let you know.