What do you do when you don't love the fabric you picked for your quilt?

I rearrange and rearrange but I'm just not loving my fabric picks for my rainbow quilt.

Too many brown and maroon tones for my taste so I'm seeing if I can exchange (I purchased precut bundles).

If I can't I'll try pulling out the fabrics I don't like, seeing what I'm left with, and filling in from my local quilting shop as needed.

At this point I'm updating my plan from 3 inch squares to 2 inch squares so each 12 inch block will have 36 fabrics. I love rich detail like that.

I'm also debating between using large 12 inch squares of the same fabrics on the back or using something totally different like a white on white print.

Yay for focusing on your favorite parts

Go Elise! I'm so proud of you for identifying your favorite parts of quilting and doing more of that! "I realized my favorites parts of quilting are picking out the fabrics, doing the actual sewing, sandwiching the whole thing together and adding the binding. So this time around, I let myself just stick with those."

A photo posted by elise blaha cripe (@elisejoy) on Apr 20, 2015 at 12:00pm PDT

Over two years ago I followed Elise's tutorial to finish my first quilt (it's not the first one I started). This is THE key instruction that made me decide I could take a stab at trying to quilt at all: "At this point, you can decide how much of a perfectionist you want to be. If you carefully measured and sewed, all your points will line up perfectly. If you didn't, they won't. Decide how much you want this to bother you and move on."

My quilt isn't perfect, nor are my photos of it for that matter, but it was fun to make, it got me back into sewing in general, and we use it almost every day.

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Embracing the parts that are my favorite and skipping the rest is what let me get back into blogging. Yay for writing about whatever I want, whenever I want. Nay for an editorial calendar, Pinterest perfect images, or a mailing list.

Planning a Delightful Rainbow Patchwork Quilt

I'm planning out my next craft project. This one is going to be a king size quilt inspired by mermaidsews's Anna Maria Horner rainbow quilt that I saw on Instagram.

A photo posted by Lorelei (@mermaidsews) on Mar 15, 2015 at 11:25am PDT

I'm going to be using a half yard bundle of Anna Maria Horner fabrics that I purchased from Westwood Acres.

I want to make a king size quilt for my bed and I only have a 3/4 size sewing machine so I'm going to do this quilt using a quilt as you go method so it's easier to work with on a small machine.

This is also going to give me the confidence/practice to go back and finish the very first quilt I ever started which a quilt as you go quilt my mom and I started when I was a kid and she was teaching me how to sew by having me use a different technique on each block (backstitching, cross stitch, button holes, weaving, using the different fancy stitches on the sewing machine, appliqué) - I did the blocks and she put them together into the quilt.

Here's the plan:

1. cut lots of 3.5" squares out of my Anna Maria Horner fabric
2. sew 4 squares by 4 squares with a 0.25" seam allowance so that I have lots of 12.5" x 12.5" blocks
3. add batting and backing and quilt each of those blocks (which should be much easier on my machine and my body that trying to quilt a whole king size quilt as one piece)
4. attach those blocks together using the quilt as you go method and a 0.25" seam allowance so they finish out to 12" each
5. finish with a binding around the edge.

I think this approach will also mean less set up and clean up time each time I want to work on the project so that I can do smaller bits at a time as my one year old's temperament allows.