I can’t wait to debut pictures of my new baby quilt. But alas, it’ll have to wait until after I give it to my sister on Sunday. It has to be a surprise (even though I broke down and showed her all the fabrics the same day I bought them).

On Saturday I started my best girlfriend’s wedding quilt, which I hope to give to her at her EARLY June shower (gulp – another fast tracked quilt – I can do this!). I will be a quilting fool for the next six weeks.

I may explode with excitement over this pattern… and the fabric. I think I want to make the same exact quilt for myself after I finish hers. It’s going to kill me to not show you all my handiwork as I go, but seeing as Katie reads this blog (Hi Katie! Love you!), I’m going to have to keep this one under wraps.

My only hint… it involved me cutting out 526 triangles. Whew. And now I’m in the process of piecing all those triangles together into a pattern that makes me just want to squeal.

(There, I just squealed on the inside.)

As I was in the middle of cutting my 526 triangles and catching up on all my favorite TV shows on Hulu (and when I ran out of favorites, I just watched anything else I’d ever heard of), I had an aha moment.

The hardest part of quilting is cutting fabric. Especially when you buy five yards of the same fabric and the fabric is bigger than your cutting board. It’s so hard to keep your cuts straight! And I hate to make arbitrary cuts to make the fabric small enough to fit it on my cutting board, as you end up with wasted “ends” that could have been used for the next piece.

And then it hit me. When you buy yards of fabric, it comes folded in half. I’m supposed to KEEP IT FOLDED IN HALF as I cut it (hand to forehead). The it fits beautifully on my rulered cutting board. Oh my goodness, why did it take me four years of quilting to figure this out?

I’m an idiot. My husband laughed at me when I excitedly told him my revelation. Because, really, isn’t it obvious to everybody but me?

(But just in case you haven’t figured it out either… give it a try! Plus, cutting your fabric while folded in half means you cut twice as many pieces at once… the first 25% of my cuts took me a whole day… the last 75% of my cuts took me just a few hours.) 


THIS IS LIFE CHANGING PEOPLE.