Cutting Fabric for a Swap

(Photo of quilt from Quiltville.com)

One of my favorite things about sewing is cutting fabric. The past two days, I was able to indulge this weakness. My "mini" sewing group trades fabric strips for a chosen project. Last year, we traded "bricks" to make the Bricks & Stepping Stones quilt from Bonnie Hunter's website, Quiltville.com. I'm still working on that top. In fact, I pinned some of the rows together this afternoon to sew the rows together during the week or next weekend at our Silver Thimble sewing day. Our next swap or trade is for a quilt that I've been collecting fabric and wanting to make for over a year, Patches & Pinwheels from the Quiltville site. I first saw a similar quilt in an old quilt book and knew that I had to make this quilt.

Our swap master is Kristie from M.S. Doolitte Quilter. Kristie has a brillant, mathematical mind (among many other talents) She organizes all aspects of our swap and we just have to follow her printed directions. We chose to make this quilt in Civil War reproduction fabrics. Now all of us have fabric in our stash, but we had to immediately purchase additional fabric from Sweet Home, where we were sewing when we plotted this swap.

I used my June Taylor Short Cut ruler to do the cutting for this swap. The directions we used were for Fat Quarters so the ruler was a good size. I cut my 2 inch dark and light fabric strips yesterday. Today, I cut the 4 inch strips then subcut the strips using the Short Cut ruler into 4 inch squares. I have the fabric packaged and ready for our trade next weekend. I'm excited to see what fabric the others have chosen for this new quilting project. I can barely wait to begin this new quilt, my first new project for 2010.