Quilting Again

This past week I went to a quilting class and started a new project. It's from a kit called Arista's Walk (click Arista's Walk from Category List). I wasn't in love for the fabrics but I liked the design, so even though I was a little late arriving, I quickly chose some shades of blue and grey fat quarters and did a crash refresher course on starting a quilt (It's been a few years). The class meets 3 times over the next 3 months, so my homework is to get all 80 blocks (!!) pieced before the middle of August. The next class is arranging them in the right gradient of lights to darks. After the blocks are sewn together, you use some sort of template to make a huge circle in the middle, then rotate that piece so you have a reverse gradient in the middle. That part doesn't sound so easy, but I'm sure it'll be fun learning!



They are all identical blocks, so it's not that technical and I can chain each step as I go along. The pattern is one big square, cut from 20 fat quarters randomly stacked, evened out and squared (that was the tricky part!). The big square is then cut into 4 smaller squares. Each of those are cut into three strips and the center strip into 3 parts so you have a small center square. The final step is to "shuffle" the center piece in each stack so you'll have 80 unique blocks. 1st stack: move the top square to the bottom, 2nd stack: move the top 5 to the bottom, 3rd: the top 10, 4th: move the top 15.



The fun part about this design is discovering what each block will look like as I move along. Which prints/solids will match up with the others? Will those two favorites get paired together? My skills are very rusty though and my original cuts weren't perfectly straight. I can see already that things are a not very square, but I didn't have high hopes for that anyway. I'm just looking to have a whole quilt finished and usable instead of fabrics on the shelf!





I was trying to think back to when I started quilting and was drawing a blank until I called my mom and picked her brain. We narrowed it down to her visiting Matt and I in the fall of 2003. I made a baby blanket for the first grandbaby/niece and then took a class to make this pretty 3-D wall hanging. (It is pieced but needs still needs a binding and backing and all that jazz.) I've collected a sizable stash and several quilting books, but somehow having children has limited my free time and I've circled from hobby to hobby in the interim. But I always bounce back!

Mainly I needed a scheduled class to get me out of the house instead of sitting in the office/hobby room on my "night off" trying to decided which unfinished project I should finish. So I decided to start another project of course! :D