Sew Many Squares!

 Sorry I haven't posted in a while.  I guess you could say life took over.

I am back, and I have so much to share with you.  As some of you may know...I am a quilt nerd.  I taught myself how to quilt almost two years ago.  I will have to fill you in on how this little journey began in another post.

Tonight I want to share my lastest quilt project with you.  My sister has been whining asking me for a while to make her a quilt.  She feels left out since her son, my mom, myself, my grandma , and a few other special people all have quilts.  I finally decided that she should have one too.  It was supposed to be her Christmas present, but life happened and needless to say her quilt was not finished started.  I had a stressful week a little while back and new that I needed to get out my fabric, rotary cutter, and sewing machine.  Who knew cutting fabric, sewing it together, and actually creating something could be so therapeutic.

I had picked out a bunch of fabric (just call me a fabric addict) but was having trouble coming up with a pattern that I liked for her.  I am funny about reusing patterns...not sure why.   I googled modern quilt patterns and landed on this blog.  This wasn't my first trip here and when I saw her Chopped Rhubarb quilt, I knew that was the pattern I wanted to use.  Even better...there was a link to a free tutorial from Quiltville's Quips and Snips!!  I love anything FREE and have made some of my favorite quilts from free tutorials.

So I thought I would take you along on my sister's quilt journey.  This quilt is a little on the adventurous  side...so bear with me.

After reading the tutorial I realized I was going to need A LOT of fabric.  So off I went to all of my fabric hiding spots and made a few little stacks.

Once all of my fabric was nicely ironed, I got out my handy rotary cutter, ruler, and mat.  Here is where the fun began.  I needed to cut one 2.5 in x 16 in strip from each of the 120 different fabrics.                      

After about 3 hours all of my strips were cut.  Aren't they pretty!

My next task was to sew the strips together in groups of six making sure I used opposite colors for the first and last strips.

Now, I like to sew a bunch of blocks together before I do the next step.  This way I do a lot of sewing, then take a break and do a lot of ironing pressing.  Here is a picture of my pretty seams.  I like to press my seams in opposite directions.  This helps there to be less bulk on the back of the quilt.

Here is a picture of my next step.  (Again, follow the tutorial I gave you above for much better directions).

Once you have your "tube" sewn together, square up make one end nice and straight using your rotary cutter and ruler.

Now you are ready to cut 6 cute little 2.5 inch rectangles out of this strip.

The next part of my project made me second guess this pattern.  The tutorial said I had to use my seam ripper and pick out a seam on each strip.  The kicker was that you had to make sure you chose the correct seam so that the stip would open up with the right square on top.  Yikes

I then had to sew these six strips together to make 1 block.  Here is a picture of my first finished 12 inch square.  How many more to go??

I will keep you all updated on my progress.  Check out Crazy Mom Quilts to see her finished quilt.  Hopefully mine will look similar.

Nighty night, friends!