The Reluctant Quilter - Part I, Piecing the Top

 I have been sewing for more years than I want to admit, and yet I have never made a quilt.  I never WANTED to make a quilt, it just isn't my jam for lots of reasons.

But when a seven year old granddaughter asks you to make her a quilt, then that is what you do.

I looked for a pattern that was 1. FREE and 2. EASY because I have zero patience for anything that requires cutting out hundreds of miniscule pieces of fabric only to reassemble them into an intricate design.  

This is what I chose, but with different fabrics since this collection was no longer available. (The blue lines are how I intend to quilt it)

This looked "easy" because all the squares are the same, two rectangles sewn together. Super simple!

I bought a fat eighth bundle, and cut out 65 printed rectangles.  Since each had to have a matching white rectangle, I figured the easier way to cut those out...

I laid the rectangles out on the background yardage, sewed the seams, then cut them out.  I'll dub this the Cookie Cutter Method. (I know nothing about quilting, this might already be a thing!)  Anyway, this was much faster than cutting out individual rectangles from the yardage, then matching them up to each printed piece.

Then I laid out the blocks to see how it goes together

There are twelve diagonal rows, so once I laid it out, I picked up the pieces of each row in the order to be sewn, and numbered each pile.  Then I stacked up the piles and started sewing the blocks into strips, then the strips into rows

Really, that is all there is to it, and it took a couple of days to sew the top

 I added a 3" border to tie it all together...

I have already cut and pieced my backing and binding. 

Ten yards of binding pieced from fat eighths.

Something tells me that the hardest part is yet to come...the basting and quilting.

The Reluctant Quilter Part II - Basting, Quilting, Binding