A bottle of wine and some monkeys

My dear friend Amy's step daughter is expecting her first child in December. Amy asked me if I could teach her how to quilt. We started with a trip to Peapod Fabrics a couple of weeks ago and a promise to get together soon for a sewing session.

Friday night; we began with a bottle of Cabernet and then progressed to the pressing and cutting (wisely leaving our wine glasses in the kitchen!). I like my fabrics trimmed and straightened to the grain before I do anything else. I prepped the fabrics and Amy cut out the squares and rectangles. You can see the pattern in the photo above. Rectangles are sewn to 4 1/2 square block centers and these blocks are sewn together without sashing. It's that simple.


Amy picked out fabrics in apple greens, reds and aquas. After I saw the monkeys on the red dots, I thought this would make an extremely adorable and simple baby quilt with the red dots sewn as sashing between the monkey blocks. But this isn't my project!



I also worked on piecing the hexagon quilt back over the weekend. It's going slowly. I do not like piecing backs. I know, I know, it's extremely popular now but it's never appealed to me. This one is pieced by necessity. I probably won't get much done this week. I leave for the International Quilt show in Long Beach on Friday. I can't wait!!!