Along for the Project - My 1st King

During 2009 I participated in a Block of The Month club with the Quilter's Hive in Newark, DE. I felt that I needed to work on a few quilting skills, like triangles, and this particular club is only $5 for the entire year (yea, the entire year). So, sign me up...

I, of course, figured that since it was such a great deal ($5) that I would do two blocks each month.

Each month I was very glad to work on these blocks, having something I knew I was going to work on and I knew it would get done. It was fun going to the shop each month to get my new fabric and block style that I was going to make, you don't know this for each month when you start, luckily they did a color scheme I liked: yellow, blue, green, and flowers (morning glories were one of them, love me some morning glories). If I lived closer, I would gladly do it again!

Back to the project, sorry.

Now I have 24 blocks that I had no predetermined project in mind for. Wow, I thought of everything the past 6 months, and nothing...

I found out about a week ago that one of my best friends from high school is getting married, yay! Yay for her, and yay for figuring out a project to make with my blocks. Even better, her favorite color is yellow.

Now I'm making my first King-sized quilt!! I can even tie some sentiment into it since I want a 25th block to make the quilt an even 5x5 blocks, hello appliqued names and a heart! I'm so excited.

The original plan: each 12x12 block will have a 3 inch white border, and for sashing between all of them I will use up my scraps to make finished 3 inch sashing, all finished with another 3 in border of scrap stripes and then another 3 inch white border, bound in a green.

Well, I have all the stripes of scraps sewn in 18 1/2 inch strips, and I don't even have 1/2 of what I need to do the sashing...

So, now I'm gonna cut each in half, width wise, so I will have enough to do a border around the whole quilt that will be a finished 1 1/4 inch.

To solve my sashing dilemma, I'm gonna head over to Chicks N Stitches (my fave local hotspot, wink wink) and get some coordinating blue and yellow to do for sashing. New idea with the sashing: sew it so that every other block will be bordered in blue or yellow, giving it a somewhat checkerboard look, you with me?

Oh, I am also hoping to send my quilt out to a long-arm quilter for the quilting. I really don't want to try to fit a king through my little Singer, yikes.

On a side note, I LOVE summer... I can actually quilt and feel like I make progress ;)