And the quilting continues...

I've finally been able to get up the guts to cut into the beautiful patterned fabric that my mother-in-law chose for me for my quilt. I was pretty scared to mess up this fabric because there is no easy way for me to get more, so I started with cutting the plain white flannel that I picked up at Wal-mart for $2.25/yard. It is just going on the inside as a lining, so it didn't really matter if I cut it wrong. I figured it would be a good place to start and get some practice...you know, perfect my square-cutting technique.

Now that I have cut 161 of 168 squares of white flannel (I ran out of fabric with seven squares to go and Walmart is out of white flannel!), and I pretty much consider myself a quilt-square-cutting pro, I have two pieces of advice for you - that is, if you ever decide to make a quilt. First piece of advice...measure twice, cut once. There's no going back if you make a mistake, so be extra careful. Second piece of advice, when cutting fabric, always start at the selvage edge, as it will be the straightest, most reliable edge of the fabric. This works great UNLESS you buy your fabric for $2.25/yard at Wal-mart. If this is the case, your "reliable" selvage edge will have a noticeable wave to it. To avoid crooked squares, parallelograms if you will, just use your eye and make sure you have a reliable 90* angle and ruler to use while measuring to be sure your corners and edges are straight!

Aside from wavy selvage edges and not enough fabric, though, I'd say the quilt project is coming along quite well. I have my pattern ready so when I have all my squares cut, I know exactly what I'm going to be doing with them. Can't wait!