Quilt along intro

Welcome to my little quilt-along. I'm glad to have you here and look forward to seeing your work!

What is a quilt along? A quilt-along is basically when someone has an idea to make a quilt and asks a bunch of people to join in making their own quilt while the host makes his or hers. I hope that makes sense.

I know that everyone and their Auntie Dorothea is doing a quilt along these days I thought I'd jump in the fun and host one too! It all started when I saw this picture. I quickly sent off an email asking permission to start a quilt along using this awesome block. I was given the green light as long as I gave credit to the maker of original quilt inspiration. Setsuko Inagawa's quilt inspiration here.

I just love a scrap quilt. All those bitty pieces of all the quilts you've made in the past years culmunated in one or more quilts. I love them much more than regular quilts I make. There's just something so special about so much variety of fabrics in one quilt. This is the quilt that will make awesome use of all those scraps you have. I have many as seen here . This was taken last fall and now those bins are practically overflowing now since I took that picture. I swear my scraps have scraps!

As for my own approach to this quilt along I haven't decided yet. I made my first block yesterday and I'll be honest, I was ready to change my mind about this whole quilt along thing. But I persevered and finished the block which didn't turn out that bad. I was quite proud that most of my butting seams matched or were a milimeter off. Not bad for a first try!



I'm one of those kinds of people who always loves to do things different than what is described. The end result the more often than not is the same but I just like to shake things up a little and make things more efficient. This block was a prime example of me trying to get the most out of something:



In the upper left corner of the picture above you can see a bit of the print out I am using to help me making the blocks, courtesy of Amy (Badskirt), which you can find here.
In the original quilt the corner square which makes up part of the X in the block has striped fabric or a text fabric running along the bias. I liked this piece of fabric I had but it wasn't wide enough to cut a 3.5 inch square from. I improvised by drafting my own template. If you need help with this step I'd be happy to show a tutorial how I made the template and how to sew the 2 inch square corner to corner even though a small piece is missing. It works, really! Although the first template I made I forgot to add a 1/4 seam allowance and had no area to sew on for my block.

I set up a flickr group we've dubbed as the Japanese X and + Quiltalong. You can join if you want to. It's free! Amy of Badskirt blog has very kindly blogged a wonderful tutorial on how to make the blocks here. Some people have gotten a head start on their blocks and are making beautiful progress on their quilt. Check out the group and see all the lovelies being prettily pieced.

So this wraps it up for the quilt along introduction. I'll post about my block progress once a week.
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Today I clocked in 4 hours. after three days of this I'm starting to realize that I need to be a little more realistic about my goal. I have a feeling I won't make it to 100 hours by June 24 if I'm averaging 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I am enjoying the challenge of at least trying. 4 hours of sewing is 4 hours less of wasting my time on the internet.
Today I pieced a quilt backing from a quilt that has been finished since LAST YEAR!
I also started working on a commission quilt I promised to have done in 2 weeks.
I like getting up each day wondering what I'm going to work on for that day.

Happy June!