You might have noticed that we recently came out with a bunch of new stash builders with some great color combinations. I instantly gravitated toward the yellows and grays in “Clouds and Sunshine”. It’s such a beautiful and soft combination of prints and colors. I just love it! Mari just so happened to have a new pattern (Half-Square Triangle Fun) that needed testing, so I bravely stood up and volunteered to do a test. As a result, I have now officially started quilting. Hurray!
I had just gotten my sewing table (finally!), so it was about time I stepped away from the small projects and dove into a real quilt. I set up my little sewing station, read through all of the pattern and prepared my fabrics to be cut. The cutting was the easy part… or so I thought. I’m still not sure what happened, whether it was my ruler, my rotary cutter or just me, but halfway through my fabric stack I realized my squares weren’t, well, square. I decided to press on and figure out a way to deal with them later on.
After a lot of cutting, I finally had 144 squares ready to go! While I found it easy enough to make the half-square triangles, I was pretty slow at it. It took me a couple of weekends to get through all of them. Because I didn’t start with a square square, I had to finagle them a bit to get them straight. It’s a good thing there were to be four leftover squares, because I really screwed up four of them beyond use! Whoops!
I was really excited to start on assembling the rows so I could finally see it come together. After sewing up a few rows and laying them out together, I was so much more motivated to keep going forward. It took a lot less time to finish up the rows than it did to assemble the squares into triangles. Before I knew it, I was sewing the last row on and was finally able to see my results! My points weren’t perfect, but I was really excited to see that I was finished with my first quilt top.
I really liked working with Mari’s Half-Square Triangle Fun pattern. Everything was very clear and concise and was very easy for me to follow as a beginner. If I were to do it again, I would definitely invest in one of the Quick Quarter tools to save on time. Now if I could just get the courage to actually quilt my quilt top! I’ll save that adventure for the next blog post!
Oct 17, 2012 at 3:36 AM Great job, and what cute fabrics you chose. What are you going to do with it? Are you keeping it for yourself? What a cute gift idea this would be. Thanks for sharing with us!
Oct 15, 2012 at 8:27 AM Thanks so much for your positive feedback, everyone! I definitely feel a lot more encouraged to keep going and get this quilt finished up:)
Oct 13, 2012 at 11:59 AM Yay for your first quilt!!! Love the fabric colors!!!
Oct 13, 2012 at 9:43 AM Katrina,
You have given me the inspiration to make a quilt like that! Thank you for telling us about your experiences. Great quilt by the way! Keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing what wonderful quilts you make in the future!
Happy Quilting!
Oct 13, 2012 at 1:11 AM Great job! I agree, it doesn't look like a first quilt, good luck on your further endeavors!
Oct 12, 2012 at 6:58 PM You did a fantastic job! Congratulations!
Oct 12, 2012 at 5:59 PM Great job! Looks like sunshine coming through our gray clouds here in the Pacific NW. Such a cheerful combination. Keep up the good work. You couldn't ask for a better teacher than Mari.
Oct 12, 2012 at 12:38 PM Awesome job!!! I also love the colors!!!
Oct 12, 2012 at 9:56 AM One tip when working with this amount of HSTs... Press using starch, pressing the seams OPEN. It was the best tip someone passed along to me and I've never looked back. Give it a shot!
Oct 12, 2012 at 9:52 AM I love the yellow and gray combo. VERY sharp! the top is very cute. I've downloaded to make for myself as a quick lap quilt.
Oct 12, 2012 at 9:34 AM It looks great.........but what I was most interested in and felt best about were the comments about cutting (wasn't as easy as you thought) and that your points were not exact. I am working on my first quilt and I am finding the exact same thing...!!!! So thank you for making me feel kind of normal.
Oct 12, 2012 at 9:33 AM It's lovely! Doesn't look like a "First ever", either! :)
Oct 12, 2012 at 8:51 AM wonderful, i love the color combination.
Oct 12, 2012 at 8:37 AM Doesn't look like a first quilt to me. Great job and the fabrics are wonderful for it!
Oct 12, 2012 at 8:33 AM Awesome job, Katrina! I love this quilt. If you don't want it, I will gladly take it off your hands. ;)
Oct 12, 2012 at 8:21 AM Katrina! I love this!! Awesome job!!!!
Oct 12, 2012 at 7:57 AM Simply goeygous daling, geoygous.
Oct 12, 2012 at 7:46 AM love the colour combo!
Oct 12, 2012 at 7:43 AM It's gorgeous! Congratulations.