hear me out

there is this new sweet little girl in my life, and her name is maybelle. i am of the opinion that all sweet little girls should have a pretty little quilt that they can love their whole life through. it just makes sense. as soon as i heard that maybelle was coming, i knew i had to make one. i even started during the summer time, thinking i could give it to her mom as a shower gift. sadly work went into a tailspin and there things sat for months and months. there was finally some light at the end of the tunnel and i was able to get it done and oh man am i so glad i did. because i need to tell you about the secret of this quilt.

first, take a good look at it. and pay no attention to that imp in the corner. do you see what i see? yeah. triangles. lots of them. did you get a little sick feeling in your stomach like i did thinking about getting all those points to line up? well, i am here to tell you to banish your triangle worry! of course i realize that there are many smarter, more experienced quilters out there that are probably laughing at my simple secret, because they knew it all along, and that's ok. because if you didn't know, you do now. originally i planned to make the flock of triangles quilt from denyse schmidt's quilt book. it's the orange & white number at the top left on the cover there. as i looked through the instructions in the book, and realized how many triangles i'd have to cut and piece my heart sunk a little. i knew that i wouldn't have the patience or the skill to make nice triangles line up with each other. i also knew that if i ignored what i knew about myself and triangles, i would get really frustrated and never ever finish the quilt. so, it was time to regroup, i went hunting on the internet and that's where i found the answer (of course) in a simple tutorial over at purl bee. it's so simple in fact, that i almost walked right past it. so here is the deal. no odd points to match, no triangles to cut. that's right. this whole quilt started as squares, and ended as squares. straight lines! i can do straight lines! kinda. but take me at my word, this quilt was easy and fast. i mean it. i did all the cutting of my white squares and my pattern squares in one evening, maybe a couple hours. i used the size in the tutorial and figured out how many 4 inch squares i wanted length and width to calculate how many i needed to cut. i did mess up and cut twice the number of white squares than necessary because i forgot that for every white & patterned square you cut, you get two smaller pieced squares. even with that mistake, i did all the cutting in one sitting. the next night, i converted my stack of white squares and pattern squares into one big stack of pieced white & patterned triangles, like magic. then i asked david to work on the layout becuase i'm not so good with that sort of thing, he came up with the lovely gradient, i pieced the squares into rows, the rows into the blanket and made the quilt sandwhich all in one evening. the hardest part of this whole project for me of was cutting & piecing my binding strips. i kept messing up that stupid bias angle. apparently i need to go on the hunt for another tutorial. once i finally made strips that lined up and would work, i did the binding by hand over a few nights of tv watching with david. done and done! both mom & maybelle are thrilled, and i feel great for getting a project done and being pleased with it. as a tiny postcript, you could use this triangle pieceing tutorial to make the flock of triangles quilt, it would just take a little figuring to find out how many blocks you would need.

ps. there should be some 1000 words action for december later today. keep your eyes peeled. i'll post here again after i update. huffmans are getting ALL kinds of things done these days. sweet.

pps. the new post is up over at 1k, it's a doosey.