You Resolved, Now Commit: Learning to Quilt

One way to make sure you stick to things is to "put your money where your mouth is". As seen in my last post, I resolved to make a quilt this year. I have resolved this before and not followed through, so in an effort to follow through, I decided to buy the materials so that the investment of money would help incentive (read: guilt) me into doing it.

I had a Michael's coupon from buying my little sister a birthday gift, so today I went to their store, I found this book of simple quilt patterns (that specifically states that it is designed to help you use a craft store prepared 12 pack of fabrics) and flipped through it. I wanted a book rather than a Pinterest design because 1) I can't lose it online accidentally and 2) it's been reviewed by an editor (I've had many Pinterest fails over the years and didn't want to invest a lot of money into a Pinterest fail quilt).

I landed on the orange pattern above (called 12 Carrots) with the diamond shaped blocks. I love argyle fabric and this had a vaguely argyle feel. My sister Bethany's favorite color is orange, so I have the goal of finishing this quilt to give to her when she  graduates college next May (technically, I'm supposed to finish by December to meet my New Year's resolution, but I decided that if I just get the top done by December, and do bating next spring, I'll count it).

I am not a quilter now (I just read a lot about it - looking at you, Elm Creek Quilt book series!) so I had to get all the fabrics as well. I'm told that eventually, every quilter gets a huge fabric stash, and I guess I'm starting one, because finding orange squares that I liked was kind of hard! I ultimately bought two 12-packs of fabric, pulled out the ones with orange tones, and then got additional single orange pieces to get the 12 I needed for this project (the photo makes some of them look kind of brown due to my carpet - they're not, I promise!). Then I sorted the rest of the mixed fabrics by color for potential future quilt projects, if this goes OK and I want to try another one from the pattern book. Boxes were 50% off, so I got a trunk-like box with script printed on it to store all of my new stuff.

So, I'm now officially committed to Operation Learn To Quilt. I'll keep you all updated as it progresses throughout the year.

PS - this post was heavily inspired by my friend Natalie over at https://vegetablog.wordpress.com/
She is way more coordinated with her sewing and general crafting than I am, and also a much more regular blogger, so if you liked this post, follow her regularly for more of this - because it's unlikely you'll get it from me. :)