Ya'll - I made a quilt...

I know what you're thinking.... 'WHAT?  Jaime Mac - who has no creativity gene in her body made a WHAT?'  I know - me too...

So here's what happened - remember my friends Debbie & Rose who helped me make my fabric wall, my curtains AND my cute pillow case covers?  Debbie has been sewing for years & Rose started a couple of years ago.  They get together every now & then to spend a weekend sewing (you know - with no kid interruptions, no husband interruptions, no laundry interruptions, no LIFE interruptions...).  We all don't have a chance to get together much because Rose lives pretty far from us.  Debbie is only 30 minutes from me, but Rose is 2 hours away.  When we finished my drapes, we knew Debbie's husband had plans to be out of town this past weekend & we had put it on the calendar back then to spend the weekend at Debbie's.  His plans fell through but we still wanted to get together so we went to Rose's house instead.  When we came up w/ the spending the weekend together idea, they roped me into doing a quilt of my own. 

Oh, the humanity.

My #1 rule was that it had to be easy enough for me to finish it in a weekend...none of this dragging it out for a year like we did my drapes.  Rose decided I could make a quilt from a 'jelly roll' & told me to scour the internet for jelly roll quilts to find a pattern I liked.  (A jelly roll is a 'roll' of like colored fabrics cut into 2 1/2" x 42" strips all 'rolled' up together.)  I found a few patterns I liked on Pinterest & also looked on fabric websites for different jelly rolls.  Debbie, Rose & I had dinner a few weeks ago & that's when they told me which one I could handle we decided which one would be best.

THIS is the one they we chose.  You should've heard them, "Oh, yes - this will be easy.  Sew the strips together, make 2 cuts, sew on the white & that's it!"  UHM....ok....sure...

Debbie & I got to Rose's house on Friday evening & they wasted no time making me sew getting started.  THIS stalkers, is a jelly roll...

You can see all the fabrics on the outside of the roll.  Remember what this started out as when you see my finished product.  You will be amazed...

The first job was picking out what order I wanted them.  Normally I have NO problem making a decision, but there were like 40 different strips to pick from & how they would go together.  We laid them out on the table... I'm not a big fan of hearts (shocking, I know) so I didn't really want to use those.  

We hung them up on Rose's design board...

I liked the pieces that were white w/ different colored shapes on them but they didn't look right w/ all the other bright colors.

Ultimately I decided I like lumping all the colors together...

I had all the white backgrounds w/ colored shapes together in a section but they got totally lost in all the other bright, fun color strips.  (See the strip between blue & pink?  It's a white background w/ small stripes.  You can hardly see it...but I still used that one.)

The bottom few rows wouldn't fit on the wall...blue & red were going to be at the bottom.

No hearts - see?

After we figured out the order, I had to start sewing strips together - TWO AT A TIME.  Sew 2 together, put them down.  Sew 2 more together, put them down.

I did that until 3 AM Friday night/Saturday morning.  Lord have mercy...

The next day I was ready to start sewing the 2 strips to each other.  Pick up 2, sew them to 2 more.  Pick 2 more up & sew them to the previous 4....

When I was done - this was what it looked like.  Remember this is a very rough draft.  I hadn't evened up the edges yet.  

I love...

After we (& by WE I mean them doing it for me & me taking pics watching) got it all evened up, we had to decide how far over to cut it.  In the design I picked there is a section that is flipped & opposite from the rest.  CUT IT APART?  Didn't I spend practically a whole night sewing it TOGETHER?

And because I'm nervous & they rattle off so many numbers I can't keep up - I wrote.it.down.   We They measured 8 1/4" from the edge & cut.  Gulp.  Then we they measured over another 4 1/2 " & cut again.  Gasp.  

 And just like that - all my hard work of sewing it together vanished...

 

 We put it back on the design board to see what we thought.  And we I thought it was freakin' awesome.  And we I can't believe we I made that.

Please note how bright the colors are.  This was in the daytime w/ sunlight coming in.  (The finished product was at night w/ only room light.  The colors are NOT as bright in that pic...)

Next we cut the white fabric to border the section we cut out & I had to sew all that together.  Then I had to decide how big I wanted it to be overall.  Remember it was 40" across?  That's not an acceptable napping blanket size.  You really gotta be able to roll up ALL in it & be cozy.  I can't remember what measurements I we chose, but they said I needed 5" of white around the edges.  And they know best so that's what I did with their supervision.

Pattern I picked:

My finished product:  

This is where my 'no creativity' comes in.  The colors are essentially the same AND we laid it out practically the same. (grouping all the colors.)  Eh - what are ya gonna do?  Why mess w/ a sure thing?

 All the while they were helping me, they were each working on their own projects.  Debbie was working on putting some embroidery on a onesie for her granddaughters first birthday.  (Yea, her sewing machine is awesome like that.)  She had ordered the design for the number & a crown from a website that needed to be downloaded to a thumb drive & then put into her sewing machine.  She had tried to do it but had run into trouble.  She asked me if I thought I could help with that.  (I'm pretty darn good w/ a computer...)  And when I opened up that computer I was immediately at ease in the midst of sewing machines, fabric & such.  I said, "Now THIS is what I know!"

 I finished my quilt Saturday evening so I had nothing else to do.  I helped w/ the computer stuff & then I was just talking & bothering them sitting.  Rose came up with something else for me to do.  She had me get the strips of fabric I didn't use in my jelly roll & had me pick strips at random to sew together.  Then she had me randomly sew 2 strips of 2 together.  She asked me at one point what I wanted to do & I said, "I don't know - this is YOUR game."  

Ugh, hearts... 3 strips worth...

 Yet again, I had to cut up all my hard work.

 Then we placed them on the board to see what we could come up with.  Rose had the AUDACITY to ask me if I wanted 2 purple or 2 pink stripes in it.  DUH...  

This is what the game master had me create.  She said it would be the perfect size for Sonny to lay on.  (She knows he lays on the back of our couch & gets black hair everywhere.)  If you know anything about cats - you know they never do what you want them to do...  

 Rose was working on a modified 'log cabin' pattern that took her the whole weekend.  She had a jelly roll of the colored fabric but she had to cut hers before she sewed (unlike me).  6 pieces of color & 6 pieces of white for each block.  We laid out the uncut fabric colors on the floor & labelled the pattern by numbers before she cut to get the color wave she wanted.  Then we labelled each fabric color to correspond with the pattern so we didn't get them mixed up. She started & ended w/ yellow & if you look at diagonaly it you can see the colors blending into each other.  She didn't even start sewing until Saturday evening & had 32 blocks to do.  When I finished her the game I helped her iron everything she had sewn.  (For these blocks it worked best to iron after EACH strip you sew.  There are 12 strips of fabric per block.  You do the math...)  She had it almost all done Sunday before we left & we helped her lay it out on the floor (it was too big for her fabric wall).  She sent us a pic after she finished the blocks she was short.  It will have white triangles on the edges which will make it square.  I think it looks awesome.

My quilt is being sent to the quilter to be quilted.  I technically only made a quilt top.  The quilter lady will take the fabric I chose for the back & slap it on & sew it all together.  I will try to remember to take a pic of that for you because the back I chose is almost as awesome as the front.  

I told them that they only let me hang out w/ them if they make me sew... & I said it enough that they started to believe it because Rose said, "Ok Jaime- since you only think we hang out w/ you if we make you sew - YOU can pick the next outing we do."  I'm thinking shopping - I definitely know how to do that...