I do get there eventually...

I announced a while ago that I was taking part in the Mod Sampler Quilt-Along at Oh Fransson! and at last I have got around to cutting my fabric and stitching the first blocks. It's not so much of a Quilt-Along as a Lag-Behind in my case, but that was part of the plan...

I really liked the design of this quilt when I first saw it, and thought it would be a good way to use some of those lovely Amy Butler and Sandy Henderson fabrics in my stash. I knew when I signed up that there would be little time to follow up in real time, as I was going away for a while. Now I'm back, however, and I spent a while on Saturday cutting all my fabric and putting the pieces on their assigned boards. Elisabeth's approach to keeping things sorted throughout the project is new to me, as are several of the techniques described. I think of myself as an experienced quilter, but I see that I have quite a bit to learn here. New ways of doing things can be interesting to try out, so I'm working my way through this, post by post. This quilt-along is a great reference, and is somewhere I would definitely direct new quilters to, because of the thorough descriptions of all the steps in making a successful quilt.
One of the things I've never (!) tried before is pressing the seams open. When I started out we were told that in quilting you were to press both seams in one direction so that the batting wouldn't migrate between your stitches and show up on top of the quilt. Batting qualities are much better now, though, and this shouldn't be an issue. I can see already that my four-patches are nice and flat, but I have to take more care with matching my seams when I cant butt the bulk of those folded seam allowances into each other. I suppose that's all going to improve with practise and pinning, though!

I haven't quite decided on the sashing yet. White has been suggested, and although I can see that it would look very crisp and bright, I'm not really sure that white is "me". I was thinking of using faded blue denim, but that would make the quilt much heavier than I would like, so I have ordered some denim blue chambray - a light cotton with the look of denim, if my memory serves me right... so we'll see how that works before I decide.