The Excitement of a New Project

Since I have almost finished the baby quilt, it is time for a new project. Here's what I chose:

Two years ago, I bought this pattern at a yard sale - an enthusiastic quilter had passed away and the family was liquidating her stash. My, she had a quilt shop worth of fabric, precuts, patterns, and sewing machines!  I like simple but effective designs, and this appealed to me.

You're supposed to make this from a jelly roll or two. I had purchased one jelly roll a few years ago in some pretty fall colors. I didn't know what I was planning to do with it - so I'm using it for this project. I picked up 3 yards of Kona cotton in "Bone" (a cream color) for the background and I started cutting. I have enough jelly roll fabric for the Twin size.

It's a log-cabin-like block done in two styles. They call it block "A" and block "B" as shown:

Block A	Block B

The fabric color and style is a bit "country" for me, but as I said, I liked the colors.

Every project teaches me something. This one is no exception, even though I've only made a handful of blocks so far.

I like to press my seams to one side. The trend for modern quilters is to press the seams open - I don't know why - I guess it makes the seams flatter.  Trying to sew open a 1/4" seam is tedious. When I was sewing some of the blocks together, the seam allowance on one seam was pushed apart by my feed dogs. OK, I thought, what the heck. I'll just press it open. Then I went on my merry way building the rest of the block, pressing my seam allowances to the side.

Don't do that. It resulted in an inconsistent block width, and the block looked "off."

Lesson - be consistent in how you press your seam allowances within your block, at least. Probably the whole quilt.

I don't know if I'll undo those blocks, toss them, of just leave them. It's not so bad that it will ruin the whole quilt. I have to think about it - if it bothers me enough, I'll have to get rid of them.