Finally!

I know I have been posting, but that's because I've been sewing. Well, on and off. I decided I was DEFINITELY going to do a quilt. I decided to use my Freshcut by Heather Bailey stack because I was determined to use it and not just let it rot under my bed. I knew immediately what I would make once I saw the new pattern from Happy Zombie (Super Zag) to go with her new Happy Mochi Yum Yum range. Firstly, I love green tea mochi! It's a special treat for me that I no longer get to have now since I moved a few years ago. I was drooling of her pictures of them ;)

I know I've mentioned this before: I have a hard time with showing progress photos since I don't find them very interesting. I'd rather just keep working until the project's done ;) Though, I do like seeing other people's progress pics! I think I might try the WIP Wednesday to help me get over that. Anyway, as per usual, on to my mistakes, LOL (this is progress, right?)

1 - Before this, I'd not ever assembled anything in a diagonal. I had to really think it through to keep myself from being confused. My brain kept wanting to read the pattern vertically or horizontally (eventually, I rotated my print out so it looked that way, LOL) This led to me mis-matching 6 pairs. Great way to start ;) Me and my seam ripper are great friends.

2 - Because of what happened in the above, I had to map out every row with abbreviations so I used the right print. I was going to chain stitch but decided to assemble row-by-row instead to keep my confusion low (well, lower). This was also because I deviated from the original 'recipe' for the quilt top (I didn't use any solids). If you just use the solid with a print, it's not confusing at all.

So my suggestions for anyone who wants to make this quilt with no solids: map out your blocks and make the appropriate notations on a print out of the assembly. Really. Serious. If I could do it over again, I would make a faux assembly of the first 3 rows so I could appreciate how all the colors looked next to each other. I just arranged my stack kind of haphazardly. I only wanted that no solid pink/peach fabric was next to each other. I would totally change the placement of 3 fabrics if I could start over today ( I wouldn't have the LIGHTEST print smack in the middle jumps to mind first).

Over all, I love the quilt though. If you exclude the solids you need 10 half yards (to be safe, sometimes selvedge is wider and sometimes narrow. I could get 5 blocks typically out of a 4.5xWOF strip but once I only could get 4) and another yard for the setting triangles.

I actually finished this last night, but my daughter wouldn't leave the thing alone ;) She says it's her picnic blanket. I have plenty of scraps to make another quilt of the same fabric just for her. Mommy and daughter quilts~ Kind of cute.