quilting

I'll quickly admit that maybe my crafting - crocheting and quilting make me like a little old lady, but I love it! I have been working on this quilt for over a year now. Once completed this will be my 2nd quilt - all for me.
What I love about quilting is that it truly is a unique form of art. The cutting and measuring and aligning the pieces actually takes a lot of mathematics. I can't tell you the number of times I probably calculated the amount of fabric needed and how many rectangles to make sure I had the right number. There are little tricks to the trade too. In making the quilt below I took 3 pieces of fabric and made long strips and sewed them together. Then I cut these groups of 3 into smaller pieces, so rather than sewing each individual rectangle - I had blocks of 3 - if that makes any sense.

What I find to be the most fun is trying to choose the colors. I feel like a painter with a blank canvas. The goals is to match, but with a quilt individual patterns are not important. It is the overall look and feel of the quilt. You have to get past matching every little color and realize that overall it fits well. Yesterday my mom and I went on the hunt for my background color. Originally, I intended for it to be a dark color - black with a dark pattern on it. Well, after searching I happened upon a beautiful color purple (no surprise) with pink undertones that was absolutely perfect. The colors flow together so nicely and make my quilt much brighter than originally expected. Pictured below is the fabric that will make the back of the quilt.

I went to Willows today and had my Grandma and a friend of her's help me put the top piece of the quilt together. I do not trust myself when it comes to cutting large pieces of expensive fabric by myself. Pictured below is the almost finished product. Tomorrow it gets sent off to be quilted (the pattern of stitching that will go over the top and hold the front, middle (batting), and back together)

Ta-Da