Pat Sloan's Globetrotting Quilt Along

Last year, I found a quilt along that I really wanted to try it was Pat Sloan's Globetrotting Quilt. At first it was a journey of trepidation and then it became a journey on precision. I wanted to work on cutting the pieces straight and as close to the right size as I could. Maybe I should have chosen a less complicated quilt along but you know I just don't roll that way. I choose a project by how much it screams at me to do it. And this screamed at me to do it. Now, I had a couple of goals, one was to cut as well as I could, two was to try and keep up, and three was to complete the quilt. I blew goal two because I did not figure on classes keeping me away from the sewing machine but hey you have to have a few failures in order to truly appreciate the successes.

I really like how Pat Sloan does her quilt alongs she gives detail cutting instructions and she also has a fabric line she uses for her quilt alongs. I am truly more of a solids kind of girl because I like to add my own embellishments, so I chose to do a black and cream quilt, I had a great deal of the fabric already on hand so it was pretty easy coming up with the colors I wanted to go with.

Here is the link to Pat Sloan's tutorials for the Globetrotting Quilt

 http://www.freequiltpatterns.info/globetrotting-2014-mystery-bom-by-pat-sloan.htm

And below is one of Pat Sloan's colorways of the quilt made in her fabric it is very bright and pretty isn't it. I could totally do a red, gray, and black version of this as well.

Another thing I like about Pat's tutorials is she walks you through the steps, which makes it really easy to follow. And she has a facebook page that she is constantly replying to questions and suggestions. She has a new Block of the Month started this month for 2015 it is called Vacation Time. Here is the link to that one as well:
 http://blog.patsloan.com/2014/12/pat-sloan-2015-free-mystery-bom-vacation-time-jan-block.html

I haven't started the Vacation Time yet but I do plan to right after I finish putting together the Globetrotting top. And that is the really exciting part. I am hoping that by Saturday, January 24, which just happens to be my daughter's 21st birthday as well, I will have the top completed.

The above picture is 3/4's of my blocks put together, and I did get one out of order but hey my goal was to cut better, and since I already blew the keeping up portion the third goal was to complete it. And I am doing pretty good with the 2 out of 3 thing. And for the most part I managed to hit the desired size on most of my blocks. I still have some work on finding that perfect 1/4" seam or scant 1/4" seam they all talk about. But I got quite a few points to line up and am pretty proud of myself as most of these blocks I have never made before.

This is a shot of all the border pieces I have cut and you see that white polkadot on black fabric that was such a heartache, those pieces are 2-1/2" by 6-1/2' pieces. I needed 54 of those pieces, yep you got it I ran out of fabric and I only needed 6 more pieces. So yesterday had to run to JoAnnes to see if I could find fabric similar as I bought this fabric years ago. Well, I found something similar but not close enough to just add the six pieces in, I will have to recut all 54 pieces, but what I will do is use all the remaining pieces from this quilt to piece together the back.

This is where I had to stop because I ran out of the fabric. I am confident though that I will be able to piece a nice backing with the remaining fabric from this adventure. I just keep repeating my motto of the year: "It's the journey not the destination that matters".

On another note, yesterday I also got a really nice trip to a lumber yard and while there I saw a tree trunk that was really cool. This particular lumber yard goes and gets trees that have fallen down or have been felled for safety reasons I guess so it is all pretty cool. But I grabbed a picture that I thought would be really cool if I could reproduce in fabric.