How to begin?

So I feel like I've cut enough fabric squares now. And I feel like if I need more I can always cut more but it's time to start the piecing part of my quilt top. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!

I'm nervous. I feel like it might be better to first pin each piece of fabric to it's corresponding grid area first to see how it all fits together before sewing the pieces together. I need to ask an experienced quilter. And I know one! I must contact her for advice.

LOVE

Cutting my fabric

I have actually started to cut out my fabric into one inch squares. Well they are actually 1.5" squares because, you know, 1/4" margins for sewing and all that.

Here is a picture of some of my fabric. These various reds, oranges, & yellows will become my red poppies.

















These greens and yellows will be stems/stalks and background colors.

















Here are some more yellows & oranges that will end up being background colors.

















Here are all my little 1.5" square fabric pieces!

















Here they are again with their larger counterparts in the background. It would seem that quilting does not really require that much actual fabric. I may restate that after I begin sewing them all together.

















Here's a pic of me about to cut this pink fabric. Thanks to Amber who clued me in on how my straight edge ruler is see-through so that I can make measurements under my ruler and then cut just the amount of fabric I want to use.

















And that's where I am. I'll be cutting fabric for a bit more, then I plan to assign each square in my grid to a color/fabric piece, then I will begin sewing them together.

LOVE!

Progress on my quilt

These steps about my quilt I actually took last year. In December, 2010, I learned how to knit - also thanks to YouTube! But it has seriously sidetracked my whole life. All I've done is knit for the past 7.5 months. Well now I've made a baby blanket, a few scarves, a dish cloth, two wine bottle holders, a hat that I took apart as soon as it was finished, and I'm working on another dish cloth. The dish cloth project, much like my napkin project, was for me to learn how to read a pattern. Learning something by watching YouTube doesn't always translate to practical application when taking your new skills out for a test run and all you know is how to make the stitches but not how to read a pattern. So I'm doing good with that.

So now I'm ready to get back to learning about quilting. I'm very much a newbie. Here's a progress list.

I sketched out my inspirational poppies on a piece of graph paper.

















I started enlarging it at kinkos and taping it together. This was a fun activity because I had NO idea what I was doing and wasn't asking for any assistance with enlarging a copy of a poppy drawing.
















Here's another pic but with my measuring tape stretched across to give you scale.

















Now here is a picture of the final enlarged copy all taped together in a crazy way. Chris is holding this up for me so it's fairly large. Each of the squares of the grid in this version are exactly 2cm. I wanted them to be an inch each but they are not. The quilt, however, is going to be in one inch squares.

















So now my plan is to cut out fabric in one inch squares and sew the whole thing mosaic style where each of the squares corresponds to a piece of fabric.

I think my plan is brilliant. I'm hoping for clean, clear, problem-free execution.
LOVE & Poppies

Resurrecting my Blog. Making a Quilt

So I've decided to make a quilt and document the experience. It's my first quilt. Well, I have to say "art quilt." My previous quilting experience includes a fence rail pattern sunflower quilt top that I have never actually quilted - just pieced the top using the fence rail method which is super easy. Google that if you're at all curious. I also made a little 10" square quilt with an appliqued flower on it. Chelsea drew a picture of a flower and I kept it, copied it, cut it out and made little pieces of fabric for each piece of the flower which I appliqued to another piece of fabric. Then I also made a little quilted cinch bag but my quilting turned out horribly and it wasn't until later that I realized I never dropped the feed dogs on my sewing machine.

So now, I have watched enough YouTube videos on quilting, read some instructional books, looked at all the important quilter's websites, been to the International Quilt Festival in Houston and it's time for me to begin.

Firstly, I snapped this pic with my phone at a doctors office waiting room last year in June when I was thinking about patterns and color and quilts. I don't know why it struck me but later I decided to use it as the inspiration for my first quilt. We'll see what I can do with it.