What a Challenge!

***Warning Very Wordy Post!***
I decided to enter in the Modern Mini Challenge over at Ellison Lane.  I mean after looking at everybody's entry last year I was definitely inspired.  All the guest bloggers this week also did an amazing job sharing their recent minis. 

I started off this journey knowing that I really wanted to do something that was super duper amazing and really wanted to find something just perfect.  I found it and it was the Fancy Folded Star.  I've never seen anything else like it and haven't seen anyone else make one recently.  I fell in love with it and couldn't wait to start.  I posted little hints here and there of different stages.  I was super excited and the finish product did not disappoint. 

Then I had to go and show my hubby, who is very picky but plain at times, and he was blown away.  What else could I ask for?  Apparently it was too amazing and more of it needed to be made and my mini turned into the start of a full blown quilt.  Which is something I look forward to do but now I was left with nothing for the Challenge.  I had already looked through all the blogs I followed for tutorial so I headed over to my Pinterest board for something new.  I found this, my new inspiration!!!  But it didn't lead to a tutorial so I googled "drunkard path" and looked at a few tutorials and started on a new path, a drunkard path. 

I can't say that this went as smoothly as my first project and to be honest at times I got really grumpy.  I only started quilting back in March and the first thing I learned is there is a method to all this madness.  There's math involved and that's why I love using patterns where all the bells and whistles have been tweeked to make it all work.  For this I thought I could just wing it, no real math was used and I honestly think that is the root of all my problems because when you wing the cutting, you wing the sewing (more than 1/4" seam but less than 1/2" seam) to make everything fit sort of right.  Then when you're all done and you try to square it, you realize its just a big mess.  But through all of that this is my end product.  I don't love it quite yet but it has grown on me and I have learned a lot (maybe a lot more than I was ready for) while making it. 



 

 

This project involved a lot of first:

1) My first patchwork pillow

2) My first time sewing curves for patchwork

3) My first hand quilting.  That was my favorite part of the whole project.

 

Overall I'm more than glad I did this and wanted to say thanks to everyone in the quilt/sewing community/blog world for sharing amazing projects that inspire me to start new things just about every other day.

 

Thanks for checking out my project and head on over to Ellison Lane to check out everybody else's.