Where Did My Free Time Go?

I have spent too long without blogging because I've had a few things occupying my extra time (what little extra I get with an energetic little boy going almost non-stop).   Somehow I've found the time over the past month or so to make a baby quilt for a friend back in Western Massachusetts.  She was due to have the baby sometime in mid-October...so I was trying my hardest to get it out to her by the end of the month.  I got it into the mail on Oct. 31st, so I guess I was close enough to my goal.  

I decided that I wanted to make Callie a quilt because I made one for someone else in that ward who I was not as close of friends with as I was with Callie.  However, I couldn't really justify the cost of buying the materials for a quilt.  I expressed these thoughts to Mark's grandmother, and she offered to give me samples that she had received for free since she didn't have plans to use those fabrics.

If you closely you can see that all seven of these fabrics correlate with the  other two sets of seven fabrics.

I looked online and found a quilt pattern that I thought would be fun.  It's called the flying saucer block, and it creates a four-point star between the blocks.

A break-down on how you put the block pieces together.

You take one quarter of the block...

break it up into its individual pieces...

add the 1/4 inch seam allowance to each piece, and then use those to cut out the fabrics.

This was my paper representation of how I wanted the final product to look!
It turned out that I made too many mistakes in my cutting that I couldn't make it look just like this, but I  rearranged which fabrics I put where.  I still this it turned out cute, but it's not how I originally planned.

This is the backing that I bought.  I couldn't find a fabric that matched precisely to the other fabrics, but this  one looked like it had the right colors, and I think it helps the quilt to look cute and feminine.  I included it onto the front as a border to tie the back into the quilt.

The first step is completed as the main triangles are now put together.  Once all the larger triangles were done, the piecing of the blocks went really fast.

A closer look at the "green block"

the "red block"

the "pink block"

The whole thing pieced and starting the quilting process...

Here I am, modeling the finished product so you can see how big it turned out.

Would you believe me if I told you each block has 40 pieces, and there are 9 blocks?
I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  I hope Callie likes it!!!

a look at how the back looks with the front!

So, yeah I spent quite a bit of my time completing this quilt, but at the beginning of October, there was something else that was taking over my thoughts and time...

     






  

 

    

I've never read these books before, but I couldn't get my hands on the book for our book club so I gave them a try.  Oh my goodness!!  I got so sucked in!!  I think I read all four books within 2 weeks, and if you really knew me, you'd know that's a huge feat.  I've never thought of myself as a reader, but I just couldn't get enough of these books.  I gave myself headaches because all I wanted to do was read, read, READ.  Yeah, now that I'm done with them, I almost want to read them over again, but I know that would be a waste of time.  I'm kind of sad to be done with them because I was really enjoying them.  I've been wanting to watch the movies again because I now want to see how they differ from the books...but there's no one around me who seems to want to watch these movies right now.  (Too bad I'm not in Illinois where my mom's group of friends are doing a movie marathon right before going to see the next movie in the theaters!!)