Flower Quilt

Yesterday I stated cutting out pieces for my daughter's quilt. Today I've been trying out different layouts for the quilt. I think now the squares have settled on the cross or plus sign pattern. 

You can see in the picture below the fussy cut flowers that I cut out from the vintage pillowcase. There is also a noticeable splash of blue that asked to be added to the quilt. I think it just wanted to be noticed.

I had ended up with an uneven number of blocks due to the fact that I had more of some fabrics then others. I tried to work in as many squares as I could so that I would have very little left over. Don't worry, the squares that didn't get included will find a home in another quilt.

I do like the way the pieces lined themselves up. I wasn't sure at first about some of the colors I picked, but now seeing them in this arrangement makes me feel a bit more confident in my skill of selecting fabrics.

After getting all the squares where they wanted to be, it was time to stack up the rows for easy sewing.

Starting from left to right, I stacked each square on top of the other. This created a total of 12 stacks with 8 squares in each stack. I used Post-It notes to easily label each row so that I would know in what order the rows would be sewn.

Now it's time to mark the back of each square with a 1/4 inch seam around the edges and get to sewing.

Fussy Cut Flowers

Last year I purchased a couple of vintage pillow cases from the Goodwill. I intended on using them in a quilt somehow. Recently, my daughter reminded me that I made a promise awhile back to make her a quilt. She has requested a quilt with all pinks and purples. She did say that she would allow a little bit of other colors, but only if it had flowers on it.

Looking at the pillow case I now see a way I can use the fabric. I knew that I wanted to do a basic square patch quilt for my little girl. I could have just cut out the fabric normally and let the flowers land where they may. But I decided to try my hand at some fussy cutting. This meant actually breaking out the rotary cutter and cutting board.

I will confess to you now, me and rotary cutters are not the best of friends. I do believe rotary cutters are a great tool for cutting fabric, it's just not my first choice. I much prefer to use a good pair of scissors. Yup, call me old fashion.

Anyway, using this square template, (which I have no idea when and where I got it), I cut about sixteen 4" squares with seam allowance included.

Now that I've got these flower squares cut out, it's on to gathering and cutting the other fabric for the quilt.