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.