I went to the cutting table and started cutting fabric for my FILs quilt. It is one of the quilts in the "7 Day Quilts" book. I cut and I cut and I cut some more. I cut out almost 500 3" squares in addition to all the other pieces needed for this quilt. I am very frustrated with this quilt and pattern so far. The cutting directions are too meager and assume you have a nice full 44" cut of fabric. I ended up cutting extra strips to get all the pieces I needed. At one point I even calculated the number of pieces just to make sure that their count was correct. Luckily the yardage was generous although I still have a small amount of cutting to do for the borders. I quit cutting as I started making mistakes and wanted to stop the bleeding, so to speak.
Saturday Fun
I can't recall how I found Linda's blog. She had posted something about an event at Richardson civic center which made me ask a question since I work in Richardson. I wondered if it was in the same town since the state was not mentioned. It turns out it was. Linda and I exchanged a few emails and realized we had met at Quilter's Connection. She remember me better than I did her. I felt a tad guilty about that since I usually remember people a lot better. She even remembered my dd and dd's friend.
We talked about meeting but made no specific plan. Then last week I saw her talking about her Thanksgiving plans and asked her if she wanted to meet up. She suggested Saturday. We started at Stitchin' Memories. She got lots of goodies and I came away with a "free" apron pattern and some fabric to make that apron. You will see shortly why I say "free". It turns out all the fabric was 25% that day so it was nice to save a few bucks.
From there we went to Quiltworks. It wasn't planned but we had to drive past there to our ultimate destination so what the heck, right? While there I bought some Christmas fabric to make two more aprons from that "free" pattern. Are you getting the idea now why I am using quotes. Their Christmas fabric was 30% off and I was not complaining. I also bought a jacket pattern that I had seen in their newsletter. They did not have a model but I was just too curious. I have other jackets planned. I need to bite the bullet and get one made.
Our final destination was Blue Ribbon Quilt Shoppe. This is a relatively new shop. They had lots of variety and fabrics that you don't see at other shops. If for no other reason that is a good reason to check it out. Her notions wall had a wide variety as well. A friend of mine uses a Hera marker. They had them on their notions wall so I picked one up. I also got one of those Cotton Picker mitts. They say to use them to get thread off your fabric and clothes. My intent was to use it on my cutting matt to clean up the threads. It works great for that!
Linda and I went to a little shop across the street and I picked up a few items. She got more of her Christmas shopping done. She made a huge dent in her list from what I saw ;). We then went down the road to a restaurant that she had heard great things about. I had a bacon, mushroom, onion cheeseburger with sweet potato fries. Yes it was on the heart healthy menu! It was good. Peach tea that I could sweeten myself. Yum! They gave us a sweet potato and raisin muffin afterwords. Maybe it was pumpkin. Delic'!
We made our way home. We talked about guilds, quilting friends and family. Linda is a sweety and we really seem to hit it off. I look forward to spending more time with her. She has already invited me for a sewing date!
Saturday and Sunday Sewing
I started sewing the pieces for FILs quilt. There are two block sets that are mirror images of one another. I have made 64 of one set and am over half way through the other 64. I plan to finish sewing those tonight and hopefully get the 64 HSTs sewn together as well. This pattern is very wasteful but for a beginner it is probably easier. To make the sets I mention above I sew across the diagonal of 2 3" squares onto a 3 x 5 1/2" brick. Once I do this I then have to trim the seam to a 1/4". I am already thinking I will just sew those pieces together to make smaller HSTs. The HSTs are the same way. Sew through the diagonal of two 3" squares and trim the seam. Think about this....500 3" squares. Plus I had to draw a diagonal through all those little boogers too for a sewing line!
Ah well...I am considering writing this publisher to share my observations on this quilt.
Hope you all had a quilty weekend!
Hey girl, you did a lot of cutting. I know you told me you had cut and cut but wow, that's a lot of cutting. I have done this method before and it is time consuming drawing the lines and wasteful unless you do sew the ends into another half square unit too. Once you get those done, though, hopefully you'll be on your way. Very sweet post about our day. I had a great time with you and look forward to more good times....hugs, Linda
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