I'm Back and I have a finish!!

Hello! I feel like I have been gone forever (in more ways than one)! It's always good to be home :) The trip back to see my parents was great, all went well. Today I have a finish, not of the super secret project I have been working on which was for their 60th wedding anniversary. . . that is going to take a little time to write. No, I'm not so organized that I wrote the post and had it waiting patiently for me to hit publish ;) BUT here's a look at what the super secret project was, a full post to come over the weekend. 

You may have seen this quilt on Lorna's blog Sew Fresh Quilts on her post about thread.

OK, on to the finish! Yes, Vera, I sewed while on vacation :) My daughter has been wanting to learn how to make quilts. I have been wanting to teach her but she lives 1,800 miles away. . . this makes teaching a little difficult. SO, I decided in the week we spent together, we could put together a simple quilt so she could decide whether or not she liked it! We hit a quilt shop (I just hated that part ;) haha) and she picked out all of the fabric herself. Girl has some awesome taste! She picked a fat eighth bundle (8 pieces) of Kaffe Fasset and a fat eighth bundle (8 pieces) of pink and purple solids (I think they were Moda Bella Solids) and a batik jelly roll (sorry. . . I didn't even get a chance to take a picture of them before she tore them apart. . . She was excited!). On the way to Grandma's house, she planned her quilt taking meticulous notes of color placement. We did not use a pattern, in typical fashion, I was flying by the seat of my pants! We walked in the door and she asked her grandma to set up the sewing machine and she started sewing :) We quickly decided some practice sewing was in order and it just so happened that grandma has a little outrageous stash. She did about two hours of practicing straight lines and we set her loose on putting the blocks together. I did some sewing on it, but she did the blocks herself (only one had to be disassembled because it was an inch shorter than the rest. . . not bad for a first quilt). My mom may have sewed some of the blocks together, I sewed the top together, my sister-in-law has a long arm and quilted it (thanks, Mitzy, you did an AWESOME job!) and I sewed the binding on to create one awesomely colorful finish:

Mitzy put Cally's name in the pink solid block :)

She is vertically challenged (might be a little like her mother LOL) and this is as much of the quilt as we could get with her on her tip toes and all stretched out :)

I'd say that's a pretty proud young lady :) Her mom might have been beaming too ;)

She did a great job, don't you think?? So here's a super easy way to make a 67" x 67" quilt with very little waste and NO scraps:

16 fat eighths and one 40 strip jelly roll (a 42 strip jelly roll would provide the added extra needed for the binding).

Cut the jelly roll strips in half and sew five onto each of the 16 fat eights. Trim the blocks to 17.25" (if you had an accurate 1/4 seam throughout the blocks could likely be trimmed to 18" square easily), sew together the blocks (the options for arranging are many, play to your hearts content). Use the trimmed fabric from the 22" side of the block for binding (obviously will need to be trimmed to 2.5" or 2.25") and voila! Finished quilt and no scraps and no waste! :) OK, the fact that Mitzy has a long arm and lives less than a mile away might have made the finish quicker ;) It actually took me longer to sew on the binding than it took her to quilt the quilt! haha

Because she had to work Tuesday, I took Cally back a day before I came back home. The weather was ominous all the way to meet her dad. It hailed and rained the minute we hit the parking lot where we met! I was soaking wet after being hit by about three half gallon sized rain drops! Then came the hail. We said our goodbyes and I started back. I got one mile from where all the weather was and the pavement was dry!! And I got to enjoy this:

Yes I was driving and yes those are bug splats on the windshield :)

Pictures do not do it justice of course but it truly was beautiful and I was able to enjoy it most of the way back to my parent's house.

I'll be back soon to share with you the pictures of the family tree quilt and my parent's reaction. There might even be a picture of me. . . maybe ;) 

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday. If you haven't checked it out, there is a TON of inspiration both on Amanda Jean's blog and the links!

Until next time, keep on quilting!!