I'm on a Roll!

It took me 36 and a half (the half is important people!) years to make my first proper quilt.  And another two days to finish my second!  As Guiliana would say - Amaze-balls!  I'm so thrilled with the outcome of this second beauty, as the odds were against it turning out ok.....

But - it did!

I took some advice from a few friends in my sewing group and looked over a couple of tutorials - here and here.  They were sort of the same, but different.  So last night I took out my gorgeous little fat quarter bundle of Hoos In The Forest, which I bought a couple of months ago, in anticipation of this project.  Guesstimated that I would use them in 9" squares and cut them all out.  Ended up with 20 squares, so once again guesstimated that this would be the size of the quilt!  I'm guessing you have put two and two together and realised I'm not really one for following patterns to a tee?

Fast forward to this morning, when I decided I would brave the local shopping centre (well, I had no choice as my iPhone got wet last night and I had to go to the phone shop to hand it in for repair) and head in to Lincraft to get flannelette to continue with my quilt.

First problem - Lincraft had no flannelette.  Apparently flannelette is a Winter fabric??  Of course - why on earth would a fabric shop stock any fabric that did not fit a particular season?  Grrrr......  The Manager-type-looking-lady was rather taken a-back when I suggested that flannelette is in fact quilting fabric.  And the lovely employee concurred with me.

Anyway.....jumped over the no-flanellette hurdle and decided I would take a punt, and buy some Bamboo Batting for the middle and some gorgeous printed white quilting cotton for the back.  I had no idea if this would give me the "rag quilt effect" I was after, so a bit of a gamble.

Back home again with my purchases and trying to work out whether I have the batting showing or not?  Took yet another punt and decided to have it showing.  So cut the backing cotton and batting the same 9" squares, and proceeded to follow the directions in above tutorials.

To say this was easy, would be quite the understatement.  This quilt (I s*it you not!) literally took a couple of hours to whip up!  Yes, it was a little painful when you get to the cutting of the seams, but the fact that you can then go and throw it in the wash and dryer, and it comes out looking so beautiful - it's worth the pain!

Could it really be true - that quilting is rather addictive?