New project, anyone!?

With my two quilts off to the long-arm quilter... and a huge dent in my wallet accordingly... what better way to celebrate accomplishment of getting half the UFO stack finished then by starting a new quilt?! Seriously~ I have new fabric that simply *must* be used.

But before we get to the series of what I've been up too tonight with the new quilt... let's look at the prep work to get one of the quilts ready to go... last night (thankfully), I measured by backing fabric for my king-sized bed quilt.  Most certainly *not* the 4-6" extra on all sides necessary for quilting.  Oops!  I suppose in the last 9 years my eye for measurements has ben refined a bit more than when I started out.  So, at 8:10pm, I'm hopping into the car to run to JoAnn's to buy backing fabric. It's a long drive to town & I made it 15 minutes to close; and had a 40% off coupon.  Sweet! So, 120" muslin backing... check.  King-sized batting... check.  Quilt top... check.

One ready to roll.  This morning I worked on getting the other one ready~ the Bits 'n' Pieces Starburst quilt.  Silly me~ I didn't check to see if I had enough batting for that quilt before my emergency trip the night before.  I used the old muslin backing that was supposed to be for the king-sized quilt... cut that down just a tad~ perfect for this one.  The batting was another matter.  Nothing says "yay" like having to piece together batting & trim it down.  At least the batting I bought for the original king-sized quilt went to good use.  Thank goodness my eye has improved!!!

Mira approved of this quilt.  She's *always* getting into my quilting! 

Anyway, after the trials of getting everything ready~ it barely fit into my big bag that I made for taking "stuff" to quilting class.

My quilty-Claus bag... stuffed to the brim! 

Much relief that these two babies are off to be finished properly.  She asks for a 6-week turn around.  For me, with one of these having sat finished & patiently waiting for 9+ years, what's another 6-weeks?!  Seriously~ more than fair.  Everything will be done for Fall & the Starburst can get mailed to my dad; probably in time for his birthday.

Aaahhh... onto the new project. Some of the fabric I got from Connecting Threads in this last order goes totally against my grain.  I am *not* a bright fabric type.  However, I have pregnant friends. :o)  So in a bold move (for me!), I am making a baby quilt out of these bold fabrics.  

Start with 10" blocks... split into 3 groups of 6 fabrics. 

So I did *no* arranging of fabric on this... I pulled them out of the package & laid them out exactly as they came.  I only pulled out the 2 black fabrics; I'm not that daring quite yet. Maybe later.

Layer them all carefully & cut them into 2" strips; 5 units per original block.

So I *thought* I'd make this really cute strip pieced quilt... almost a Rail Fence pattern. Daisy-chaining them together made sewing 15 blocks a total walk in the park.  Probably the easiest sewing I've done in a while.

The blocks as sewn~ they'll be squared off later. 

Next logical thing to do is to lay them out how you're thinking of sewing them.  Except, I hated it.  It looked cheesy & not very exciting.  So now what.  I've got 15 blocks sewn up with no idea what to do.  

Guinea pig cutting.  That's what!  I took one of each pattern & cut them into quarters.  Re-arranged the blocks & this is what I've got... 

Sew much better then my original "thought"... 

They're not sewn yet & the rest of the blocks will need to be squared out & quartered. Once all the blocks are sewn, I'm going to have a tough time with the final layout.  But, so far, so good.  I've got a package of 2.5" strips in the same fabrics.  Quite possibly this quilt will be reversible.  Which is fine with me because I wouldn't have a clue what to do with the left-over fabric!!!

Seeing as though it's past Midnight... I ought to call it a day & try to catch some Zzzz's! 

Happy Quilting!!!