Firsts & Seconds

Today, I made my first quilt in one day. I woke up and quilted from about 10- 6. I took a break to eat and snack here and there but, for the most part I was a quiltaholic all day long. At one point I tried to force myself to take a break because my boyfriend insisted that if I didn't I would have a heart attack from "sewers distress". I ended up right back in my sewing room workin' away, though. This is not only my first quilt done in one day but, it is my second quilt ever! My first quilt I finally finished this fall after working here and there on it for about 2 years. My aunt got it for me as a Christmas gift with all the little pieces cut out, even the little triangles. Apparently, it was a pretty challenging quilt for a beginner to tackle. The owner of the quilt shop told me that making difficult quilts is "discouraging" for first time quilters. Making the Ohio Star quilt as my first quilt had the opposite effect for me. I am now practically addicted to making quilts and have decided there is hardly a greater feeling than to cuddle up in a quilt that you made yourself. Anyway, today I decided to go for the scrap quilt/ charm square quilt. I really wanted to try out that 9 square technique where you cut the 9 square in half both ways and rearrange it. So, I started off with my 200 5x5 squares I cut out the night before and made a 9 square to test it out.

 I used almost all of my fabrics that I have laying around besides my floral fabrics that I have to save for the block swap. These fabrics turned out nicely together, though.

 

 First, I cut my 9 square in half vertically. The first one I measured out exactly where half is but, found it was easier to just fold it in half, snip, and fold it in half the other way and put a snip to mark where half was in both directions.

 Then I cut it in half horizontally. Once the 9 square is cut up you are free to rearrange the individual blocks however you would like to. I really like this technique because it makes it look like a lot more work was put into it than really was. It is really simple to do, too.

 I ended up squaring up my blocks so they were all the same size and mixing them up between 4 different cut up 9 squares. This made the new block combinations more random in the end.

My quilt ended up with the mix and matched blocks in the middle, surrounded by a green floral fabric [stolen from my block swap fabric], and then the rest was filled with the original 5x5 blocks. I had a lot of fun making this today and now I need to get quilt backing for it and figure out how to do "binding" on it. Since I'm a beginner i have a lot to learn about quilting, especially since I don't even know how to do a "binding" for my quilt yet. I knew if I didn't power through this and get it for the most part put together then I wouldn't have time to finish it for a while. I start school again on Monday and I don't know when I'll get enough time to slam out a  quilt in one day again, or to even get a lot of one done. I've got a few more projects on my mind for the near future, though. So, I'll see where that takes me.