My first quilt project is going well so far. I ordered this great book and picked out what looked like the easiest quilt to make. After spending hours looking at amazing fabrics online, I decided to make this first one out of up-cycled pillowcases and sheets from Circle Thrift.

It took me a while to get the hang of cutting straight and even squares. My preferred method is a combination of scissors, a quilting square and a rotary cutter. Stuffing my perfectionism in a box, I decided not to iron all the fabric beforehand and also not to worry too much about the perfect cut.

With good music in the background and rain pouring from the sky, I laid out all 144 squares for the quilt top. There's no space in our house big enough for a queen size blanket to be laid out flat, so the squares overlapped.

And so the Monday night sewing marathon began. I stitched the rows first with only a couple "oh $%*#!" moments. Some shortcuts: I didn't use any pins and I didn't cut the thread after finishing each seam. Two bobbins and twelve completed rows later, I couldn't help but sew it all together to see the finished result. Justin worked on a puzzle while I put my foot to the pedal. The hum of our machine mixed with Beck, Arcade Fire and Over the Rhine. And a little after midnight, we spread the top over our bed to see how it looked:

The top is almost finished. I still need to fix some seams and cut some thread from the back. And while the squares don't match up perfectly (from uneven cutting), they look pretty okay. Hopefully by next week I'll finish with the batting and backing. Then it's on to handquilting :-)