I'm really in trouble now...

I think I've been bitten by the quilting bug. I don't quite know how it happened. I always swore that I had no interest in quilting, that the idea of cutting and sewing all those small pieces would surely drive me insane. And yet...

OK, so I did make a little quilt for E. That was sort of the start of it. I never knew that you could buy pre-cut squares of fabric (called charm packs)! So when I came across them at this amazing fabric store a few months ago, I thought, how hard could it be? Half the work is cutting, and that's been eliminated! That was the the beginning of the end. I actually finished the crib-size quilt in (for me) a reasonably quick mannger, even though the actual machine quilting was such a pain that I swore I'd never make another one.


Then a few weeks ago, I came across a "layer cake," which is big 10" squares, in this adorable set of Christmas prints and at almost half off! How could I resist? I thought, "This would make a wonderful Christmas gift for a family member." I resolved to pay someone else to do the quilting with a long-arm machine, since that was the part I most disliked. And that's where I got totally sucked in.

I started thinking to myself, well, just sewing these giant squares together is sort of boring. Maybe I should try and do a slightly more complicated pattern. So I started looking online at patterns and tutorials. And then I wandered into another cool local fabric shop with the idea that I'd at least pick up coordinating fabric for the backing and binding, and pretty much all was lost. I came out of there with a pattern, a ridiculous number of fat quarters (I'll save my stash issues for another post), a million ideas for new projects, and neither backing nor binding fabric. Eep.

So now I'm waffling on whether to actually use the pattern I bought or to save it for some future new quilt (because I'm realizing there WILL be more quilts in my future). And I've realized from the yardage requirements on the pattern I bought that I don't have quite enough to make as a big a quilt as I had originally intended, so I've started debating whether I should try and find another layer cake, or maybe get some yardage and do more borders...and it just gets crazier and crazier. My initial savings of $20 is probably going to end up costing me hundreds.

Although I'm happy to say, at least I'm taking others down with me; I think I've managed to suck a few friends into my new quilting mania. Haha!