I'm quilting!

The other night Kate and I went out to dinner with two of her online quilting friends. In the course of the conversation, one of them asked Kate why she hadn't gotten me into quilting. She gave her standard answer about the advantages of having a mother who loves fabric, hates sewing and thus gives her daughter all the cool fabric she buys. I gave my standard answer of being afraid of my sewing machine and not needing another addiction (playing with clay is enough). However whenever I am here at Kate's, I am intrigued with the wonderful things she is creating and the photos in the quilting books she has around. This visit, I told her I wanted to do something very simple for the front of a pillow cover - something that was actually quilting. So yesterday we got out the fabric and began. First she sketched some simple (well, simple to her) pattern ideas. My initial idea was just a bunch of squares in different fabric - now that is simple. Anyway I chose a pattern I liked, although somehow we ended up with two, and then we looked through her stash for appropriate fabric. I had brought with me two yards of fabric that I wanted to use for the back and also have on the front in the pattern. One pattern had a square in the middle with rectangles of increasing size bordering it. (log cabin)I actually did all the sewing on this one. Kate did have to do a bit of trimming in order to correct where my seams were not quite even. (I have never been able to sew a straight seam!) This piece ended up larger than I had planned because when we had it 'done', the center block looked out of place, so we added a border of that color. It's a large pillow, that I will stuff with soft filling - very comfy. The other pillow case is about 12 inches square and is a zigzag pattern. (rail fence) I really liked this pattern and will probably do others using the same idea, but arranging the rails in different ways. Kate actually sewed this one, because I am very slow at the stitching and we were both tired and hungry. But I understand how we did it and can do others that way. Kate has photos of these items on her blog and I will put them up here if I can find where on her computer the photos are stashed. TADA!