DIY: (wedding) quilt

Okay, first and foremost ... we're officially 4 months away from the wedding! Ah! Excitement! Jubilation! Panic! Terror!

Alright, back to business....

I love projects. I love always having projects. Always. I hate being project-less. Paintings. Felt creations. Home decor. You name it, I usually try to do it.

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to only take on projects that I think can be completed in one day. I hate projects that drag on because I'm a "want-to-do-it-and-finish-it-right-now-so-I-can-bask-in-the-results-of-my-own-amazingness" kind of girl. Okay, not really. But I do love to finish everything I start because I only have one table for crafting. And when I craft, I CRAFT. I get crap all over the place and that was fine when I lived with my parents because they had a basement and I had a designated craft area. But apartments are small. And we only have one table. No basement. No craft area. Our dining table is my craft area and if I ever need that table for other things like school work or eating at it (ha, like that ever happens), then crafts get set aside. And when crafts get set aside, they get forgotten. Things get lost, I forget about stuff and then I'm sad. And so are my crafts.

So, what I'm trying to say is that I hesitate to take on large projects that take time. The problem? Well, I've wanted to make a quilt for a long time. And the wedding is the perfect excuse to make one because I can write it off as a wedding expense! I love to sew, but I suck at it. And sewing projects, for me, take a long time. I have a pattern for a handbag and the fabric to make it sitting in my desk as I type this that I've had for over a year. Haven't even taken it out of the bag. I need help. Serious help. And my grandmother is the number one source for that help. But, she lives on the other side of town and is usually too busy through the day to help me with sewing projects (give the woman a break! she has a dog kennel business to care for). So I avoid sewing projects.

But not this one! I'm making a quilt. I bought the fabric and I found a tutorial online. I'm doin' it. If I wear really brave, I'd be trying to recreate something like the quilts in the photos below:



{click photos for sources}

But I'm not brave. I'm a sissy. So I'm not even really making a quilt. I'm making the blanket in this tutorial from Sew, Mama, Sew! But as far as I'm concerned, it's a quilt. And technically, it is. Minus the quilting part. It's tied instead of quilted. But maybe I'll grow a pair and decide to quilt it.

{photo from Sew, Mama, Sew!}

We're hoping to use it as a backdrop for our photo booth but I'm not sure if it'll end up being as large as we want our backdrop to be. If it's not, I don't care. I still love sewing. Even if I suck at it. And once I'm done, I'll either know that it's do-able for me or I'll realize that I should never be allowed within 20 feet of a sewing machine. If it turns out to be the former, I already have fabrics picked out for the next one.

It took us f-o-r-e-v-e-r to make a solid decision on a fabric. And by "us", I mean me, because I kept going back and forth between two. Our final decision was based on some mock-ups that I made in Photoshop to get a better sense of what all of the fabrics would look like together (please keep in mind, I am graphics expert):



While I love the colors and the bold quality of the red/orange/pink one, it isn't going to work for the wedding. We want something that will blend with the outdoors, not something that will stand out like crazy. Plus, Mr. FP is a man and isn't a huge fan of that much pink. He had a thing for grey. Even though he loves redheads. Strange. Anyway... so I've decided to save that for another time and go with the blue/grey fabrics from Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley line.

{source}

Now I just need to find the time to wash the fabric, cut the fabric, lay it out right, sew the squares together, make pockets, baste, stitch, sew, layer, tie.

Oh man, I am in so far over my head. Maybe I'll just make a casual trip to my grandmother's house sometime soon ... with all my sewing gear in hand.