Miriam's Quilt - Part I - Fabric Panels Down On The Farm)

How exciting is this!!!  The photos she has provided are place above.  Hopefully I have placed in the right order.  I've included her message to me below with very little editing.....just any personal notes.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.  Stay tuned.  I may not post the next steps for a few days.  I know you will enjoy her personal thoughts and writing.  She is awsome!

Hi Cheri,

1.       I bought the fabrics --- two of your panels of animal farm and  1.5 yards of each RK gray, burgundy, and navy blue fabric (always buy a little more than what they tell you for those unfortunate oops). I had to order the fabric from three different places and the panels from a fourth place but it was worth it.

2.       I am using the pattern provided by RK http://www.robertkaufman.com/quilting/quilts_patterns/hoedown/ -- This is a great pattern to showcase your artwork. RK is providing it on their website for FREE!

3.       Cut, cut, cut --- quilting is all about taking perfectly, beautiful fabrics and cutting them up sometimes to a million pieces just to put them back together again! This process took me all day. They say you should measure twice and cut once. For me, I have learned to measure four times and then cut once--- once you make a mistake in cutting is over and you will need to buy more fabric for your mistake.

4.       Iron, iron, iron --- must iron all fabric before cutting and what I use is a little Niagara starch to get a crisp, flat fabric to cut. The hardest and longest job was cutting the individual frames of the animals. When they say fuzzy cut it, it means you figure out how much of the frame you want to show in your quilt, but must stay within the measurements given to you for cutting. You also have to factor in the 1/4" on each side that you will be taking in as a seam when sewing pieces together. So while they look wonky when you finish cutting them, you hope you did it right so only the animal/background shows and not the black borders surrounding each frame when you sew it. A lot of the frame had to be cut down from 11"X10" frames to 9.5" squares--- but it worked out nicely.

5.       Sew, sew, sew --- now that everything has been cut according to the instructions from the pattern and is seating in my sewing basket, I am ready to go over to my sewing machine for the real fun!

 As I start to put the quilt together, I will be sending you pictures of the progress. Unfortunately, I may take a couple of weeks in sewing, since I may need to take a trip to see my son who is in college and of course there is always other things that get in the way of me having fun. I hope it won't be too long in finishing the top of the quilt and then there will be one big step after that and one smaller second/final step in totally completing the quilt.

Warm wishes,

Miriam