While the Cowboy Quilt was on the shelf, I needed a project to work on that I could actually quilt when finished. By now, I have been doing quite a bit of reading on the web, watching You-Tube videos, buying books. I stumbled upon the "Quilt-as-you-go" technique. I bought a book called "The Essential Sampler Quilt Book" by Lynne Edwards, and I carried this book with me everywhere. It is well-worn, read and re-read. I love this book, and would highly recommend it.
I decided to make a Sampler Quilt with this book as my guide, quilting each block as you go along, and sewing them together at the end. The hard part was deciding which blocks to do. I ruled some out right away, they were "Way too hard!" I started with the 3-rail fence block since I already had done that one. It was such a delight to be able to quilt a 12" block, especially after my struggle with the monster Cowboy Quilt. I loved doing these blocks. I gained skills and confidence with each one I did. As I approached the end of the quilt, even the "way too hard" blocks now seemed possible to me, and I was successful in making them too.
One main problem was that I ran out of my red fabric for the sashing strips and borders. I should have paid attention to that old adage, "Measure twice, cut once." But again, live and learn. I was left with a lot of smaller pieces, and so I improvised, adding a small 4-patch piece between red strips, making a double border of them.
This quilt was given to my friend Linda, for her birthday. Linda loves red, and this was my motivation for the color and fabric choices. She LOVED the quilt. (So did I -- it was hard to part with this one!)
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