Quilt Along Block #2 - A Success!!

After my epic fail on Wednesday I have been shying away from my sewing machine the past few days worried that I was going to screw up on this block yet again BUT I finally got some sewing done tonight on my Quilt along hosted by Skippity Do Dah Quilts.

I did mess up on cutting or sewing (still not sure which!) the 3 7/8s squares but I managed to do a little workaround and they wound up working.   I really like to lay my fabric out as I go along to make sure that I don't mess up too much along the way.

Even though I said I like to lay it out before I sew it - sometimes things get flipped around!  Sing it with me now 'one of these things is not like the other....can you tell me which one....?'.  Yep, you are right, the pinwheel on the bottom square isn't a pinwheel.  Enter seam ripper.

The top all pieced together.  I do like it but I had originally planned on using the dark fabric in place of the green and pink circles but I managed to mix things up yet again and rather than cutting MORE fabric I decided to go with the fabric that I cut.

The final block in all its glory!!!

The first two of the twelve block quilt along finished!  Its CRAZY busy and crazy colorful but I think I'll be giving it to my 4 year old daughter and what little girl doesn't love a ton of color in a blanket?!

I'm having issues cutting 7/8s of an inch - HOW DO I DO IT?!  Is there a certain ruler that clearly shows the 7/8's of an inch or is there a quick cheat way that I can do it without messing up?   I have been using the tiny (what I think is the) 7/8 marker on my big Omnigrid ruler but that didn't give me the right sized block.  One thing for sure - this quilt along is totally teaching me new things!!

Quilt Block #2 - EPIC FAIL......

Wow - I should NOT be sewing today....... I was all excited to do the second quilt block for the Quilt Along hosted by Skippity Do Dah Quilts so when I saw that she posted this weeks block up I jumped to my fabric stash to see what I could use for this block.  Not only did I cut the wrong size fabric....I cut the wrong size fabric THREE times.....  The instructions from the quilt along were perfect, it was just me and my rediculous baby brain that kept messing up.

I cut 4 3/4" squares rather than 4 1/4" squares.... and 4 7/8" squares rather than 3 7/8" squares.... and I completely forgot and cut my re-cut 4 1/4" squares into quarters rather than in half...(those are the pink triangle tails you can see in the upper right hand corner of the picture)...

I am pretty sure these triangles are ok but I REALLY need to put my sewing stuff away for the day so I don't do the angry sew thing!!

Well I'm bummed, I was totally looking forward to my finished block today but due to my continued screw ups I guess they'll be a tomorrow thing!  I love the look of the block and I think my crazy fabric colors might actually look pretty good this week - it will be interesting to see if tomorrow is as disastrous as today was!  

Quilt Along - Block #1 Finished!!

I started the Quilt Along on Tuesday but for some reason when I was trying to finish it that night my sewing machine decided that it was done for the day and kept eating fabric.  So rather than throwing a hissy fit or fighting with the machine I called it a night and came back to it today.

The purple boarder looks almost blue in the picture but it turned out better than I thought it would which is always a plus!

I went through my stash again to see what 'might' work together without having seriously CRAZY color patterns going on but I think any way I look at it I'm going to have one psychedelic quilt on my hands.

This week was a learning experience for me since I've never done Hour Glass blocks before but I'm really happy with how it turned out.   I'm looking forward to next weeks block - hopefully I'll know how to do it if not let another learning experience begin!  ;)

My First Quilt Along!

I was perusing my blog roll this morning and came across a new Quilt Along that just started today over at Skippity Do Dah Quilts and jumped in with both feet!  I'm super excited and hoping that I didn't bite off more than I can chew!!

Its a 12 week quilt along and when I'm finished I'll have 12 fully completed quilt blocks for the quilt top.  As much as I would have loved to run out and bought a bunch of fabric for this quilt along I made a promise to myself that I'll just use the fabric in my stash and see what I come up with.  That being said I have a wide range of totally girly fabrics that don't necessarily go together.

This is a portion of what I was trying to go through to figure out what fabrics might work well with this quilt.  I've got a bunch of cheap'ish fabric from my local Fabricland but only a few pieces work together with each other so I think its going to be a VERY wild, busy and crazy quilt by the end of the 12 weeks but thats ok - thats what scrap quilts are all about or at least what I keep telling myself!

I finally decided on four fabrics that I'm pretty sure that I like together.  Part of me wants to run to the fabric store to find a 'better' boarder fabric BUT I'm sticking to my guns and not going to buy anything for the quilt top (I'll need to get some batting and backing but thats a different story!!).  

I had originally taken this picture as an EPIC FAIL picture since I thought we were cutting the 5 big squares as pinwheels and I thought I messed up but after re-reading the instructions I realized I didn't screw up and thats always a good feeling!!!

This is the block top laid out before having the smaller blocks pieced together.  I had managed to sew the bottom row together then my sewing machine kept messing up on me and eating my fabric.  After switching thread, turning the machine off for a while, cleaning some extra lint out, giving it a good whack and yelling at it I finally had to turn it off for the night before I started 'Angry Sewing'.  Angry Sewing is a bad, bad thing since I always manage to do way more damage than good when I get into a huff trying to sew.

Hopefully my machine will be in a better mood tomorrow when I start back on it and finish the rows and add the boarder to it.

Week 1 almost finished - 11 more weeks to go!!!