I-Spy Quilt / Fabric Exchange / First Quilt Ever

Last fall I was pursuing the inter-webs and came across a fun-sounding idea - a fabric exchange!  The gist of it is this: (1) You buy a large piece of fabric and cut it into small squares.  (2) You get a bunch of other people to do the same thing.  (3) You collect all the little squares and separate them into many, many piles (one for each person).  And (4) Each person ends up with lots of little squares of many different kinds of fabric.  It is an easy, relatively inexpensive way to gather a variety of different patterns.

Another fun project I have seen online is an "I-Spy" quilt.  Remember the game I-Spy?  Basically, you make a quilt of lots of different small, repetitive patterns, and it can be used as a game to keep little ones busy.  "I spy something you eat..."  "I spy something that flies...."  "I spy something green and yellow..."  Little ones can scope out the quilt for bugs or watermelon or whatever.  I decided to pair these two ideas together and do an I-Spy fabric exchange with some friends.

I have done a small amount of sewing, but I have never attempted anything along the magnitude of a quilt.  Fortunately, there's a website for that, too!  (Isn't the internet a wonderful cornucopia of crafting know-how??).  I found a tutorial that walks you through the process, step-by-step: First Quilt Ever.  Wahoo!  Let's build a quilt.

The first step in the process was gathering my supplies - I needed lots of different "tiny print" fabrics, so I organized my fabric swap.  I found a few willing participants, and then they did all the work gathering many, many more :)

Since I was "hosting" the fabric swap, everyone sent their neatly trimmed squares to me.  Here's what we started with.

 Fun fact: you can get 56 five-inch squares from a yard of fabric.  Ideally, you would have 56 different people choose a yard of fabric and cut it into 56 five-inch squares...and each person would end up with 56 different fabric squares.  We had about half that many people in our swap.  If I would have been thinking ahead, I should have had each participant get a half-yard of two different fabrics.  It would not have cost anyone additional money or effort, and we would have had twice the variety.  Oh well.

After I collected all the squares, I got down to the business of sorting.  This ended up taking way longer than I thought it would.  But Jonah obliged with an extra long nap, and I caught up on a few episodes of Parenthood.

I learned a lot about quilting through this project.  For instance, I did not realize how much planning was required.  It really is a mental exercise trying to figure out how to get all the pieces together, make sure no two same fabrics are touching, getting the colors evenly distributed, etc.  But it was fun, sort of like a puzzle.

Testing out different arrangements

I learned that most quilts are made of three pieces: the quilt top, the backing, and, in the middle, the basting.  The quilt top seemed like the most intimidating part - that's the part with all the little squares.  I felt so accomplished when I finally finished it!  ...Then I realized that was only the beginning.  I still had to add a border, trim the backing, pin the "sandwich" (that's the three pieces, put together), "quilt" the sandwich (that's where you sew all three layers together), and finally hand stitch the binding.  Whew.

I had decided this quilt would be a Christmas gift for my nephews.  It was a good thing I had a deadline, because parts of this process were quite intimidating, and I might have given up if not for this looming goal.  For the backside of my quilt, I found a piece of fabric with a cool "road map" design that I thought the boys would enjoy playing on with their cars.  And I finished the whole thing off with Cyclone-red binding.

I ended up finishing just in time to get the quilt shipped off to Denver before the Weldons left to spend Christmas at Disney Land.  Hopefully they are able to get some use out of it!