My First Year of Quilting and what is has taught me - Part 2

My second quilt that I made was for my mom, I picked two fabrics that I thought she would like.  I expected her to add more colors. She added plain white. You know what they say about expectations though right.  So I gave her a stack of 5 quilting magazines (My entire library at this point) and told her to pick a pattern.  I didn't care which pattern but I was not making another quilt without a pattern!!!

This is what she picked.

So I cut my 13" squares, I cut them all in half.  (oops if you want them all to line up in a certain way and you have a horizontal print.  Make sure your blocks are all cut in the same direction LOL)

I sewed all those giant have square triangles together.   I frog stitched a bunch of triangles (rip it, rip it)  I tried to get them all to go the right way... I laid out the quilt on the design wall in the way that the pattern showed. Mom came in and turned all the triangles so that there were stripes... sigh... It's her quilt.  This is where I learned that it matters some which way the print on the fabric runs...

 I sewed blocks into rows, then the columns.  Tried really really hard to get everything going the same direction. Gave up and sewed some in on the bottom row going the wrong way, after all its not like she stands at the end of the bed staring at it right.

I googled how to sandwich a quilt, and how to quilt a quilt.  And put my walking foot on Grandma's machine and off I went.  I stitched in the ditch and twice down each block... There are some squiggly lines.  The backing got bunched up in a couple of places.  It's not perfect but neither am I.  This is the quilt that proved to me that there is NO WAY I could quilt my dragon quilt myself.  I barley stuffed mom's through the machine and it is the same dimensions as the dragon.


Here is the finish product.

So what did this quilt teach me?
1. How you cut the fabric for each square & triangle WILL matter in the pattern.
2. 3 colors are not enough (boring).
3. 120 x 120 is a BIG Quilt.
4. Thank God this pattern and fabric is not MY quilt LOL.
5. It's harder to stitch in the ditch and sew straight lines than it looks.