My First Fair Quilt

I have made quite a few quilts over the past few years, but have never actually entered any in the fair. So this year when it started getting close to fair-time, I decided that since I seem to do my sewing projects best "last-minute", why not this year? "Normal" people work all year on a nice quilt to enter, but I started sorting through my large stash of scraps on sunday evening, July 26th. And the final day to turn in quilts for the fair, is Saturday August 15th. And I am due with baby #3 (and also have 2 small children), on Sunday August 16th. Therefore, any sane person in this situation would probably choose a nice small quilt from a simple pattern for the new baby, or something like that. But this is my first fair quilt! I decided to do a Queen-size (we need it for our bed anyway), out of scraps (which takes much longer because you can't just cut up a nice big piece of fabric), and am trying a complicated pattern I've never done before. It is called a spiderweb quilt, and done by the paper-piecing method (which of course takes a lot more time also), and uses strips of various widths. Mom started teasing me that I was going to go into labor starting such grandios projects, but so far it hasn't worked. =)

First I cut out the centers of the blocks, which end up being stars, out of a couple different yellows.
Then I made piles of the different shades of blue strips that seemed to be of similar tone. Of the fabrics that I had a bit larger pieces, I cut 5inch squares for the border of prairie points. This is supposed to be a "scrappy" quilt, and the strips aren't supposed to be the same width- which is a wonderful scrap-reducer!

I saved some of the bigger pieces for later if necessary, as I didn't know quite how many scraps I needed to make the finished quilt size.

In order to keep the scrappy look, I organized the strips in piles around my sewing machine to make sure each block (consisting of 4 triangles) didn't have repeating fabrics. Towards the end I was getting low and had to have a few "strings" similar in one block. Most people do this sort of quilt with their entire scrap stash, so don't need to worry about keeping things different- but I wanted to keep just the similar blues and yellows in this one.

The 5inch squares I folded in half diagonally, then again; and pressed. These will be used along the edge of the quilt instead of the normal binding. I have only done this on a couple of quilts, and it is more difficult, but adds a unique touch.

Four of the blocks coming together. Once you lay them out together, they make a spider-web shape in the middle.

15 of the blocks together now, Breanna loved counting how many spiderwebs I had as I added blocks. =)

Once I had 15 blocks together (they took roughly 30-45 mins. each), I lost some motivation and took a few days off. Then one day I did 15 more blocks.... Mom was sure I was going to go into labor now! =) If you are wondering how I came up with this much time; I did most of the work while the rest of my family was sleeping and I was dealing with the "I can't get comfortable or sleep" pregnancy fun. I also worked some while the kids played.

Once I sewed the 35 blocks together to make the center of the quilt, it really started looking nice and making me get more excited.

Then I added the borders to make it the finished size, all of which I had to go and buy. I got very lucky and found a coordinating floral print for the wide border, though, that matches as if I started with it and chose the scraps to match it! I was also planning on using the wide-backing fabric for quilts but found nothing to match, so went back and got more of the floral print for that. I am hoping to be able to piece it together on Monday so that I can quilt it and be ready for prairie points. Then hand-stitching the back closed and I will be finished! Only 6 days till I have to be completely done....... I took a class on saturday about machine quilting, and learned a lot of new things that should make this quilt more interesting.