Our first Second Saturday Sewing

This past Saturday was our first Second Saturday (of the month) Sewing day. I was pretty excited about getting together and creating. Five of us were able to get together and 3 of us made/started baby quilts.

We celebrated small victories. This was MMP's first time using a sewing machine and this was her first row of charms completed. I loved the fabric she picked for her nephew's qulit. very neutral browns and then she mixed in a few bright coordinating colors that really jazzed it up.

We slowed down long enough to celebrate SDJ's birthday.

My bright squares all assembled. I really was euphoric. JSS does a really great job of teaching and explaining and encouraging. I didn't get a picture of her squares but you can oooh and aaah over them on her blog post about the day.

SDJ worked on a purse

MMP's finished squares. She'd never used a sewing machine before so I think I was almost excited about her achievement as I was about mine! I'm excited to see it with the border, backing and binding.

When I got home Daughter was in a horrible mood for a reason I don't even remember, so I thought showing her the quilt would cheer her up. She's been very interested in the quilting process and has helped me cut squares/hand me pins/ask me dozens of questions/whatever. She's told me more than once that this is a quilt we're going to work on together, using teamwork and then she will "sleep under the warm comfy quilt in her bed at night time." Don't forget, I have a daughter who has very strong ideas and opinions about the way things should go.

So when I left the house before she woke up with a bunch of 5 inch squares of fabric and showed up hours later with a mini-quilt, she was HOT.

It went something like this:

"Look what Mommy made today. It's your quilt."

"NOOO!! YOU DIDN'T USE TEAMWORK WITH ME. WE DID NOT WORK TOGETHER. YOU DID IT ALL BY YOURSELF. I WANTED TO HELP."

"Hey, wait, wait. It's not finished yet. You can still help. We'll do it together."

"Now? Can we work on it now?"

sigh. "sure."

I unpacked and knocked out the rest pretty quickly. There was some stress when I realized the fabric wasn't cut straight, making the polka dots look askew. But then I realized that I probably wouldn't sew it straight anyway, so it make little to no difference whether the polka dots were straight on the fabric or not. I'm so glad JSS had the idea to use a brick pattern for the squares. It took the pressure off having the corners having to line up exactly.

The finished front.

All I have left to do is add the backing, filling and binding. Which I really have no real clue how to do yet. JSS talked me through it and I think I can figure it out given enough time and google searches.

This is a closeup so you can see the details a little better. The only non-solid charm I used was a fabric I originally chose to be the binding. But I started second guessing that decision and bought something else I think suits better. You can see the non-solid is the second square from the right on the bottom. It's yellow with an orange morse code pattern.

Since Daughter has claimed this one and Son has shown interest in it as well, it looks like I'll be making a second. For Son, I'm going to use the same charms, but a different color motif and use blue polka dots for the border and backing. I'm excited about ordering the fabric and getting started on it.

ETA: this is the tutorial JSS picked that we made our quilts from. From Diary of a Quilter.