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. :)

Huge Mother's Day Sewing Giveaway

My sewing machine is ready, I have been picking up supplies and even have a pattern picked out. So now it is just finding the time to start cutting all the pieces and putting them together. This will be my first quilt, and I plan to document the process so I can go back some day and see how far I've come. And hopefully anyone else out there wanting to quilt can see they are not alone in getting started. I am starting out with just some basic squares for the first one. But the next one I have planned has lots of hexagons and I am trying to find the perfect bee fabric and prints to make a lovely design.

Anyways, we are on a tight budget, so I have been entering giveaways to start building up some of the supplies I will need to get started. And there just so happens to be a really great one going on now. And there are 14 days left to enter. You can check it out here. Let me know if you win!!!

Any other crafty ladies out there? What do you like to make? I wish I could make stuff all day....