Flower Quilt Update

I've also made a little more progress on my Flower Quilt. With my new skills from my quilting class, I cut out all the little green squares I will need for the sashing. I've laid it out on my spare bed, but am still futzing with it. 

Star Quilt

After having my flower quilt applique squares turn out better than I hoped, I decided I should take a quilting class to give me the best chance of putting them together well. I signed up for Beginner's Quilting. It was a four session class. The first class was on January 22nd. We made our first square in class:

By the second class on February 5th we had to have all our star squares done. I made 55 total and ended up using 54 in my quilt. Before class I laid them out in a tentative pattern:

During class #2 we learned how to add sashing and setting points - this step went faster and by the 3rd class my quilt top looked like this:

During class #3 on Feb 26th we learned how to add borders:

During class #4 on March 5th we saw several demos on how to put the quilt together and actually quilt it. It's been a little while, but I've finally found time to put the layers of my quilt together this weekend. The next step will be to machine quilt it, but I think I need to take the Beginner's Machine Quilting class first.

Flower Quilt - Machine Applique

It took me a couple of weeks to have the guts to start machine appliquing my squares. But with a little bit of practice, I started doing the easiest parts of each square and slowly progressed. I could have done better in a few places, but overall I am quite pleased with how these squares turned out.

Flower Festival Quilt

My first quilt is inspired by the book Flower Festival - 50 Applique blocks to Grow Your Garden by Kim Schaefer. I traveled home to Wisconsin the second week of October to ask my mom to help me learn how to applique. I believe she might have thought that my choice of an initial project was a bit ambitious, but is now impressed with my progress. She helped me to choose from my fabric stash and fuse my first flowers onto the background squares. I practiced machine applique, but was frustrated by puckering of my fabrics with the sewing. Upon returning home to Austin, TX, though, I visited my local JoAnn's Fabrics and they recommended adding a stabilizer backing to eliminate the puckering. I seemed to be on a roll, as within a couple of weeks I had all 16 of my flower fabrics fused and ready to be machine appliqued.

New Quilter

I took up the hobby of quilting last October. I wanted a way to track and record my progress, so have started this blog. Soon I will add pictures related to my first two projects!