A finished block quilt top

Excuse me if I squeal in delight – it’s my first finished quilt top, and I’m quite excited with how it’s looking! I have to admit that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to this point…

Last night I finished sewing the strips, and then cut the long white strips for between the strips of blocks. It was difficult work, made more difficult due to my issues with straight lines, a 12″ cutting mat and a short ruler!

After sewing it all together, I did notice that some of my blocks were obviously not the same size to begin with – the bottom edge doesn’t line up quite as I’d hope, and it’s really fairly obvious. I’m going to ignore it though, and just hope that every one else will as well. It’s destined to be a blanket for the couch anyway.

I started working on the back – decided to do smaller versions of the blocks from the front. I’ve cut them to 4″ blocks and plan to do one strip of them off-centered on the back side. We’ll see…

Now it’s off to the store – I’m completely out of thread!

Wish me luck on the next stage of this quilt – I can only imagine it gets harder from here on out!

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I had big plans…

…to get the top of my newest quilt finished over the weekend.

of course that didn’t happen.

I always think that the weekend will be perfect for completing the sewing projects that I can’t seem to finish during the week, but somehow I always find myself busy doing other things. We’ve had a lot of rain here in Vermont during this summer, so when we woke on Saturday and didn’t see any threatening thunder clouds, we headed off to the beach.

It’s sad to see how fall-like this photo appears, though I suppose it’s that time of year again. You can even see some of the trees in the background that seem to be starting to turn.

When we finally returned home last night, I did a bit of work on the quilt. Thanks in part to many of the helpful comments I received from my previous post about the quilt and the issues I was having, this quilt has come along more easily. I’ve even gotten better at cutting in a straight line! (yes, a ruler and cutting mat does work much better than using a pattern!)

If you recall, I started sewing the blocks for this quilt last week, and ended up with two types of blocks – each used three different fabrics, but in a different type of pattern.

I originally thought that I’d make two quilts, since I didn’t love the two patterns mixed together, but after cutting and sewing a number of additional blocks, I decided that they’d work together after all. (Although this may have more to do with me deciding I’d have a better chance of making one quilt, not two!)

Each block is about 8″ square, and the white sections are about 5″ high. I didn’t plan out a size for this quilt, but hope that it will end up working as a throw for the couch. In the future I’ll need to work on my planning and measuring, but for now, I’m just going to hope it works out!

So, maybe a finished quilt top tomorrow?

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More giveaways!

Again, on other blogs, not mine (not yet, anyway!) there are a few good giveaways. I came across this website here – On the Dot Creations. Julie has a great blog and this week she’s having a giveaway extravaganza! If you have time to spare and you want to find some cool Etsy shops, head over there to take a look. Here’s a list of all the giveaways and their ending dates. Some end at midnight tonight so hurry over there if you want a chance to win!

Another good one is over at Cotton Candy by Natalie. She makes lovely camera straps in all of my favorite fabrics… and I think that one of them would be just the ticket for my camera! I like the Amy Butler Pink Coriander (though I’d be happy with any of them!) You have until August 24th to enter to win one of these great straps.

Enjoy the weekend!

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