Kimmie's Wedding Quilt... Part 4

Step 4 of this project is to make 600 half square triangles. Yes, I did say 600! To make this go a bit quicker I found a webpage to help...and it's FREE!

http://www.quiltingandwhatnot.ca/Half-Square-Triangle.html

You print these sheets in the appropriate size (they have a variety of sizes available), pin the pages to strips of dark and light fabric that are facing each other, and sew on the dotted lines. You then cut on the solid lines, remove the paper and press open. Still a time consuming propostion (16 hours), but much faster than making them individually.



Now the 600 HSTs have to be sewn into strips of 5. This went fairly quickly (6 hours) by first setting aside 120 HSTs and chain piecing the remainder into sets of two, then adding the single to make 120 sets of three which are then sewn to the remaining 120 sets of 2 to end up with 120 sets of 5!



The local quilt shop owner will be retiring soon and is having an inventory reduction sale! Lucky for me I realized this before she closed the doors. I went on an afternoon shopping expedition and came back with this for the backing! I just love it! All the right colors.

The next step is to make some of these pieces into blocks...but I'll save that for another day.

Distractions

Just so you don't get bored with my sort of diary of Kimmies wedding quilt I thought I'd change the subject today and talk about some of my distractions from quilting.

Last night was our county's Relay for Life event. The American Cancer Society sponsors this fundraising event every year all around the country. Funds are used to continue research for a cure... not only breast cancer, but all cancers! Teams are formed, money is pledged and team members walk around the track for 12 hours. There is a special survivors starting lap and a luminary ceremony to name and memorialize those who have died of this disease followed by honoring those who have fought and won their battle. The remainder of the night is filled with fun activities. Of special importance this year is the beginning of a new 20 year study about genetics and cancer. To register there is a simple questionaire, and some blood samples drawn for testing. Every participant is given a number to protect privacy and you will be contacted periodically during the next 20 years. With both my best friend and mom being cancer survivors I felt this was important enough to participate with hopes of finding cures/prevention for all future generations. At the end of the night we had raised over $103,000! Sorry, I forgot my camera so I couldn't take any pictures.

This morning I started my day with continued work on Kimmies wedding quilt, but after a couple hours in walked another little distraction...my 2 year old grandson. He loves peanutbutter and crackers, walking our dog Toby and following grandpa around the garden. Today was harvest day.... strawberries! Eating them fresh picked from the garden was a real treat for him. Here he is with his favorite aunt after tasting just a few!

Mom wasn't thrilled that his new white t-shirt and shorts were covered in strawberry juice...Nana was in the doghouse. But, being resourceful I threw everything in the washer with some soap and Oxyclean and him in the tub with some bubble bath, all was shiny and clean again and Mom was smiling when she headed home a couple hours later.

Kimmie's Wedding Quilt ... Part 3

The next step in this project was to make 60 string blocks. I went to Dollar Tree and purchased a 60 page sketch pad and gave it to my husband who took it to work and used one of those big paper cutters to cut all 60 pages down to 8.5inch squares. Perfect!

But making these blocks was looking to be more challenging than I thought. Not making the blocks, but finding the fabric. You see, I wanted this to be the "scrappy" part of the quilt and use men's shirts. Well after several weeks of visiting our local Goodwill I had only 3 suitable shirts... and I needed 15-20 to have a variety of fabrics! It seems the men's shirts donated in this area are all polyester, polos, plaid flannel or denim! Here it was the end of February and I was running out of time.

In steps my sister-in-law... she lives near Baltimore... lots of goverment and professional jobs! She scored and shipped me 15 shirts! THANK YOU Dorene!

I spent 5 hours deconstructing shirts. I cut off the sleeves and set the remaining body of the shirt aside for later. I then cut the seams and cuffs off of each sleeve. Then each sleeve was cut into 1.5inch strips. Now I have a washbasket full of strips to work with.

I spent there remaining days of February and all of March ... a total of 30 hours... sewing strings to paper, removing paper and trimming the blocks to 8 inches.


Then each block had to be cut in half diagonally and four of those halves sewn back together to make 20 eleven inch blocks and 18 half blocks.

Kimmie's Wedding Quilt ...Part 2

It took several trips to different quilt shops to gather all the coordinating fabric and finally on Feb 1, I was ready to begin cutting and sewing. I started with making the 172 "threesies". Cutting strips of blue and purple, sewing them together, then cutting them again. This took about 4 hours total. Not consecutive hours, mind you... there are so many distractions around here what with family, church and community activities and work... more on that in another post. So I'm working on this "in-between" with hopes of getting it done close to on time!



The next step is to make 120 sets of light/dark squares aka "twosies". This involved cutting strips of light and dark fabric, sewing the strips together, then cutting. This, again, was easy and took only 2 hours.



Next came the half square triangles.... 60 of them! I cut squares of brown and purple, then cut them diagonall to make triangles.  Next, I sewed a brown and purple triangle together and pressed open. This step took a total of 6 hours


So far that's 12 hours of work on only 3 steps! 5 more steps to go!

Kimmie's Wedding Quilt.... Part 1

This is my first attempt at blogging, so I hope you will be patient with me as I learn how to do this.

What to blog about??? Well, how about the quilt I am currently working on for a wedding present for my niece. I am frantically sewing pieces together in hopes that I would have a completed top to show her on the big day...May 14... only 10 more days! I will do the quilting after the wedding and mail the completed quilt to her later...she is a very understanding niece :<}

The pattern is Roll Roll Cotton Boll... a mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.com. The mystery was revealed over an 8 week timeframe beginning December 2010, but I didn't begin this project until mid January 2011 when I received the wedding invitation and decided that this was the quilt I wanted to make for her.

This pattern is designed to be made using your stash....you know... all the left over pieces of fabric from past projects. Ideally, the stash is cut into workable sizes of squares and strips... unfortunately, mine is not. Let's just say stash management is something I am in the process of learning. My stash is currently stored in boxes and sorted by color, but no workable sizes...that's a project for a future date. I chose, instead, to go to the local quilt shop and purchase fabric in her color choices (blue, green purple) to make cutting the pieces necessary for this project easier and quicker. I also purchased men's cotton shirts from Goodwill.

I will stop for now and get back to sewing. But above is a picture of the fabrics I chose. I'll be back later with updates and more pictures of the process.