Quilting along – week 1

I have been a follower of Amy’s blog for a long time and I have been thinking about joining one of those quilt-alongs for quite a while (even before I actually started quilting!), so when she posted about this new adventure a couple of weeks ago, I decided to join in the fun.

For this sampler quilt we are making, we were supposed to use 8 half yards of fabrics (or scraps). I went the “scraps” way, as I didn’t want to buy fabrics (it didn’t seem sensible when I’ve got yards of the stuff here at home). So, I dug into my personal stash and came up with a lovely mix of fabrics. It’s a good thing that I’m always going for the same kind of colours: lime green, pinks and lately orange (this is weird because I don’t like orange that much usually).
Fabric choices

There is a couple of fabrics in this mix I’m not too sure about – namely, the little rose buds (on the far left) and the one with the orange background. We’ll see.
From left to right there is: Rose buds by Maywood Studio, 3 fabrics from the Candy Cotton line by Clothworks, 1 FQ from the Love U for Moda, the orange-y ones are Riley Blake’s fabrics and the 5 FQ to the right are from the Nicey Jane range by Heather Bailey.

So, last week, Amy posted the first couple of blocks for week 1 and it took me until Thursday to cut into my fabrics. I had never cut for this kind of blocks (my quilting experience is very limited!), so it was a bit scary at first! But I did it and it was much easier than what I was thinking. I’ve got a few rulers now, it does make the cutting and measuring a little bit easier.
All cut!

Yesterday, as I was battling with my PC and several anti-virus, anti-malware/spyware softwares (my World of Warcraft account has been hacked into and my characters have been pillaged – it will be restored, but I’m still pretty annoyed and upset about it), I started to sew all those pieces together. I finished this morning and I’m very happy. It all lines up pretty nicely. As usual with me, it’s been handsewn (I’ve got good hopes of getting a big sewing machine next month). I’ve also eyeballed the 1/4 inch seam allowances. I checked them a few times and they were spot on!
All sewn up, my blocks for week 1

Nice, innit? I did have a mishap with the owl block, as I didn’t pay attention to the direction of the fabrics: I ended with perpendicular owls, so I had to undo and redo, but that was a minor annoyance and it could have been easily avoided if I had lied down my squares before sewing.

I’ve just noticed that Amy has posted the blocks for week 2, so I’m going to have a look at those and think about starting them pretty soon!