International Quilting Day

I hope that you all were able to enjoy International Quilting Day. I was supposed to be working, but I decided it would be worth losing sleep to spend the day sewing.

I have been redoing my sewing corner and decided to put the big ironing board away. It took too much of my small space. So I found a small ironing board at Goodwill for $2. It was a mess, but I had lots of fun with fabric and a staple gun recovering it.

With my new ironing board made on Friday, I was all set to work on my first quilt on Saturday. So I started by planning out where I wanted each square to create the bee body.

Then I spent the whole rest of the day piecing it together. This part was fun and frustrating. I thought I was so careful cutting and so careful with my seams, but some of the pieces still do not line up as I wanted. I put some of them together more than three times. Then I decided to go with a quote I recently saw and felt that it would be better finished than perfect.

So it is not perfect, but it isn't horrible either. It is only a small fraction of the whole quilt and it took me so long. (Is this horribly slow for one days work??) So this will take a while, especially if I only get a weekend here and there.... but it was so much fun.

I worked a little on another project on Sunday to help the remake of my sewing corner. I am excited to share that with you soon. Just a little more to do...

My First Quilt

I finally decided what I should create for my first quilt. It took forever, and there are at least 8 other quilts in planning... but for the first one... I decided it should be for my soul mate, my hubby, the beekeeper.

I found this great fabric at Connecting Threads. I loved all the honey combs, little bees and beautiful flowers. And then they ended up having a 40% off sale. So I snagged a bunch and got planning.










So then I started planning it out. I am still not sure about the wings, but I have a basic plan that will have me just sewing squares together for this first one. Once I got the basic plan together, I found this great white fabric with little hexagon/honeycomb designs all over that will be great for the rest of the quilt. The fabric was really fun to pick out.

But I am soooooo nervous to put this thing together. I guess making the first quilt for my love wasn't the best idea. I don't want to mess this up, and I know he will inspect it from top to bottom. I have been sewing quite a bit, but never anything this large. I don't know how I will even quilt it and I have not ordered my walking foot yet. So for now, I have a few hundred more squares to cut and lots of piecing to do.  I will probably just stare at the quilt top for a while after it is put together before basting and quilting. That will be fun!

If you have any tips for a first time quilter, please share. :)