You Have to Start Somewhere

I bought my first sewing machine three months ago and signed up for a beginner sewing class right away with the goal of learning how to make beautiful quilts.  We learned the essential details of how a sewing machine works and how to sew straight lines (or at least attempt to).  Here is the pillow case I made at my beginner sewing class at Fancy Tiger in Denver:

I am hoping to take more classes there in mid May but unfortunately I am out of town for the zipper class which is the next class I want to take.  In the meantime I signed up to take the Beginner Quilting Class at Snappy Quilts in Greenwood Village which started three weeks ago.  And I am totally hooked.  We are doing the Penny Lane pattern which consists of twenty five 10 by 15 inch blocks.  Here is a sample of two blocks which I have already sewn together:

We are supposed to have all twenty five blocks sewn together by Saturday.  In that class we will learn to do the vertical sashing in between the rows of five blocks.  I am almost done but due to some beginner cutting errors because I got too comfortable cutting, I need to go buy three more fat quarters (18 by 21 inch fabric cuts) tomorrow to finish three of the fat quarters.  By the end of class on Saturday, I will have instructions on how to finish the whole front of the quilt.

Now this quilt is not one that I would choose to do and I am not really in love with it but its a good learning experience.  My goal right now is to do a quilt like this one.  And even though I have yet to go and pick out fabric and plan everything out, I could not resist today to try to do one pinwheel from the scrap fabric that I had around from the first quilt.  Here it is:

I loved the trick of lining the middle of each of the four squares to the 45 degree angled line in the instructions to make each of the squares square by trimming around the ruler with the rotary cutter.

I ordered some fabric that I should get this week and I hope to get more done before class on Saturday that I will post in the next entry.