The Adventures of a Honeybee

My First Quilt Project













I have officially started making my first quilt!! I've wanted to learn how to quilt basically since I started sewing a couple of years ago, but was waiting until I was "ready." I was recently inspired by the new line of Freschcut Fabric by Heather Bailey. She has a great blog called Hello My Name is Heather, which I started reading last summer. She has wonderful taste, cute projects, and takes truly beautiful photographs.

So when I heard that she was coming out with her own line of fabric, I was excited! Her fabrics came out earlier this year through the Free Spirit Fabric company. I was browsing through the Fat Quarter Shop, and found this: a "Jolly Pack" of all 40 of her fabrics in 5 inch squares! The stars had aligned--this is how I would make my first quilt! This idea was very appealing to me, in that I didn't have to worry about choosing colors or cutting fabric. All 40 of the fabrics go together very well without being too matchy, and they are pre-cut with pinking shears.

Last weekend, I went to my mom's house, and she helped me come up with a design for the squares. I needed some solid colors to integrate into all of the patterns, so she gave me some yellow and green fabric squares to sprinkle in there. I know it's difficult to see in the pictures, but the yellow fabrics has light, faded polka dots on it, and the green fabric has tiny moons and stars on it. Perfect!

The design we came up with features this fabric, my favorite of all of the prints:

This is actually my mom's favorite too! (Click here for a bigger picture) We placed four squares of this fabric in each of the shades in the center, and surrounded it with a green and yellow border. Then we put four green squares in each outside corner, evenly distributed some yellow squares and the rest of the printed fabrics. Mom gave me a quick lesson and showed me how to iron and pin the squares so that they line up correctly. Arranging the squares and cutting the yellow and green fabric squares took most of the afternoon, so we stopped before any actual sewing.




The next morning, armed with coffee and lots of excitement, I started piecing the strips together. I sewed one row together, and then sewed two strips together (eight strips total). It was so fun! After each strip was added, I ran upstairs to show Mike, who was deep in computer-playing mode. He was a good cheerleader though!

My next step is to add a 6-inch border around the edges, which will make it about 52" square (lap blanket size). I was thinking about edging it in the yellow fabric, and then backing the whole quilt with green fabric. I also like all of the pinks in the fabrics--I could back it with pink. What do you think?

Then, I'll be off for a trip to my Granny's house, where she can help get me started on the actual quilting part! I plan to quilt it by hand for this first one--wish me luck!