The Purple Monster of a Quilt

I've never really been a crafty person. I am such a perfectionist that even the tiniest flaw in anything that I am making frustrates me and I want to give up. So I put away the thoughts of doing anything crafty as it intimidated me way too much.

A few years ago while I was living with my parents and learning how to live life as as a single parent I decided that making a quilt would be a good idea and a good time waster. I had no clue what I was doing. I forgot pretty much all the basics to sewing I learned in home mech in junior high, but I didn't care. I was going to do this project no matter what, and if there were flaws, I wouldn't let it get to me. So I packed up the boy child and off we went to Hancock Fabrics. I really had no plan in mind, but I figured buying a beginners book to quilting and the fabrics I liked plus all the tools I needed, I would be good. Two hours and two hundred some odd dollars later, the boy child and I left Hancock fabrics with everything I needed to make this amazing quilt.

We got home and I layed everything out, and setup a little sewing station. (By the way Mom, thanks for letting me use your sewing machine!) I flipped through the book and figured out a design and set out to measure, cut, and iron all the pieces. When I was done, I started to sew the beginnings of my quilt.

I worked on this quilt nearly every day for a month. Buying and cutting more fabric. Learning and trying to maintain a 1/4 inch seam. It's a lot harder then it looks to maintain a perfectly even seam. I even used a strip of white tape as a guide line and I still manage to flub it in places. But I was told that was to be expected when doing your first quilt anyway.

I started off with three different fabrics and unfortunately, I used an old camera phone to take these photos so the pictures don't really do it justice.

I started out with cutting two of the fabrics into squares, and the other one into four strips as a border. I layed them out on the floor to get a feel as to what it will look like when finished.

 Using 1/4 inch seams, I sewed all the squares together and in this photo, only two of the sides. 

As much as I loved the look of the quilt, I felt like it was missing something. So to continue on with the project, I ended up buying five more different styles of fabric. I unfortunately do not recall how many yards of fabric I got for each fabric. Once I had the fabrics, I surfed the internet looking for a way to put it all together. That's when I got the idea to log cabin all this fabrics.

The two different log cabin squares sewn together

After completing all the squares, I layed it out next to the completed portions of the quilt. As you can see, the corner squares I combined different fabrics including the fabric from the inner squares.

So there you have it. My unfinished quilt. Stay tuned for the finished product. (Which I hope will be soon.)