WIP Wednesday – 1.22.14

This weekend, our friends Craig and Brittany came to visit us!  We had a great time exploring more of San Antonio and Austin.  As most vacations are, this one was centered around food.  We has scrumptious pizza from a wood-burning oven, burgers, milkshakes, sushi and more.  Yum.

What would a vacation be without a little crafting….

Craig saw my sewing machine set up and wanted to try a few stitches as he had never used one before.  Little did he know I would bombard him with a litany of quilting terms and tools.  Before the day was over, Craig had made his very own quilt block.  I had a few pieces left over from my night sky quilt ready to be stitched up.  Do you see that workmanship?  I’m so impressed.  My first quilt block certainly didn’t look like that!

Rather than be too sucked into the girly hobby I was introducing, Craig pieced while having a beer.  I’ll have to concede on that one.  I’ll make a quilter out of you yet!

As my sister’s wedding date is coming up (4 months!), its time to start her quilt.  She has requested a queen size quilt for her new bed.  I took a few magazines home with me at Christmas time to get an idea of what she would like, and she had a clear favorite.  She picked “Midsumer Soltice,” a stunning and intricate quilt from the Love of Quilting magazine.

After going over the 6 pages of directions, I decided to make a sample block using fabrics from my stash to see how things went.

It took me 1.5 hours to cut, and 1.25 hours to piece this one block.  Multiplying that by 64 (the number of blocks in this quilt), it would take me a whopping 174 hours to make the quilt top.  For those of you doing the math at home, thats 30 6-hour work days.  I love you Sam, but this project might kill me.  Time to pick a new pattern…

We’ve spent hours going back and forth looking at different patterns and fabric lines.  Hopefully we can find something that she likes just as much AND won’t jeopardize our friendship!

Happy quilting, friends!