Hand Pieced Flower Quilt

My daughter's flower quilt is coming along nicely. I had to take a few days off from working on it as the in-laws were in town, but I'm back on track down.

I did manage to take my quilting with me to Disneyland this past weekend. I worked on it while standing in line for some of the rides. I got about two rows done while in the park. You would think I was sewing two baby seals together the way people were staring at me. I had to be reminded by my hubby that very few people these days know even how to hand sew, let alone have ever seen anyone do it in public. Such a shame.

In case you haven't realized it by now, I do not own a sewing machine. It's not that I don't like them or anything. It's just not in my current, nor foreseeable future budget. But I'm not going to let that stop me from enjoying the pleasures of quilting. People have been piecing fabrics together long before the sewing machine was ever invented.

Only a few more rows left on the quilt and I'll be ready to add the batting and back. I'll show you the quilt top again once I get the final row stitched on.

Have you been working on any hand piecing projects? Please share in the comment section below.

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.