Homespun Honey Quilt

This is a project I started in late November of last year. I found a bunch of cute homespun fabrics on sale, and I knew I had a pattern for a scrappy homespun quilt somewhere at home. Particularly, a pattern that I thought my honey might like. Being the ambitious creature that I am, I thought I would have time to finish it before the medley of winter holidays (I celebrated Christmas growing up and Hubby-to-be celebrated Chanukah, so we do both now). No surprise that it didn't happen.

I managed to get all the strips cut out and sewn together before we left to spend Christmas with my parents, but the whole project got shelved because of holiday visits and then forgotten about during the new year. That was when I got my Etsy shop started, and those projects took precedence over all my other current projects. About a month ago I pulled the strip sets out and dusted them off and got to work on them again. Sadly, I had to iron them all over again (I will not being making the mistake of setting aside an ironed project in the future).

Lots of happy strip sets, freshly dusted and pressed

Then I pulled out my trusty rotary blade and ruler and started cutting them all up... and cutting... and cutting. Cutting the strips out in the first place took a while, sewing them together was a snap, but cutting them up again was just a time killer. Fortunately, I was able to keep myself occupied during these hours by watching Deadwood (which I highly recommend). After lots of whiskey swilling and several wild-west style killings, I came out on the other side with a big pile of 6"x6" strip squares.

Stacked and ready for the next step!

Since there are several squares from each strip set, I laid them out across my worktable and started selecting the squares for each row. I ended up with more squares than the pattern called for because I made several extra strip sets. I did that not just because having some extras is always good, but because I augmented the pattern a bit to accommodate his tallness. In the finished product, there will be a few extra rows and each row will be a little wider to keep the quilt in proportion.

Each stack is a row waiting to happen

I got them all stacked up in their rows, and now I can get down to the fun part: more sewing! Hopefully I can find the time to get the quilt top finished in the next week or so. I am still awaiting my special quilting gadget, so I don't have a time crunch on finishing it just yet. But I've made a lot of progress on it and soon it will keep my honey nice and warm... except that he hardly ever uses blankets in the summer. Oh well. It'll keep until winter.

In case you were wondering, the pattern I used came from BHG's Easy Quilt Projects. It's a cute book with about 40 quilting patterns, mostly full-sized quilts but also some cute household projects like coasters and table runners. It's great for a beginner quilter especially, the instructions are very clear and easy to follow. This particular pattern is simple to do, and easy to scale either up or down. I might do a little tutorial on strip quilts soon.