Sewing Update, April

Time for a check in to talk about what I've been sewing in the past month. On the UFO challenge I'm participating in, March's number was 11.  On my project list, 11 was written as "Christmas quilt for couch".  A totally unstarted, unplanned, but several year wanted item.  I had a mish-mash group of Christmas-y fabrics in my stash, but nothing specifically coordinated and didn't even have a pattern in mind.

About the middle of the month, I happened upon a pattern I liked, that I thought I could easily adapt to the size I wanted a Christmas quilt for the couch to be, and that should work with my particular fabrics on hand.

Enter the four-square quilt!  I've never actually followed someone else's pattern before when making a quilt, let alone purchase a pattern, but this time I did!  For the most part, anyway.  It was quick and easy with the majority of the math all ready figured out for me, and I sewed most of the quilt top in just a week.  It just needs the borders cut and sewn on to be a completed flimsy.

I made mine 4 blocks by 4 blocks--couch sized once I add the borders.  Which maybe I'll get done yet this week, because the main hold-up on this project was that I took time out of doing my own sewing to teach DD2 how to make a quilt.

She has a good friend (and former college roommate) who is getting married this weekend, and she wanted to make a throw quilt for the bride and groom (who started dating back when she was a roommate of the bride).  DD2 has zero sewing experience.  But she was determined that she could learn, given an easy enough pattern.  

So we choose a giant log cabin block.  Literally, a quilt that is made of a single huge log cabin block.  She had some fat quarters that she'd been collecting for a while (the quilting bug might have been slow in coming,but she'd caught the fabric buying bug a few years ago, LOL).  Using some of those fat quarters for the shorter strips she'd need, plus going stash diving in my fabric hoard, she picked out each color of the quilt.  She did her own math on how long of each fabric she needed strips cut (and sometimes sewn together to be long enough), and I gave her a basic tutorial on pinning, using the sewing machine, and ironing.

I won't say that it was a totally lovely and joyful experience; there was weeping (on her part) and gnashing of teeth (on both our parts), but in the end, she has a nice, personal, handmade gift to give that hopefully will see many years of  love and use.

Pinning the outer strips on the floor when the quilt outgrew the table.

Finished front.

Finished back (you can't even tell where it was pieced to be wide enough).

She chose red for the center block to represent both love and the warmth of the hearth.  Greens are for plants and trees, blues are for the sky.  

Although she swears up and down, after getting this quilt finished, that she will never ever make another quilt in her life, I have the feeling there will be more in the future.  Afterall, she came home from craft-store shopping with a friend the other day and showed me a couple of fat quarters she couldn't resist buying.