Five things I learned from making this quilt

Here are the 5 things I learned from making this quilt.

1. Make sure you buy enough material from the beginning.  I thought I had but since I created the size of the quilt from another pattern that was for a table runner, I misjudged the amount.  Never assume when you go back to get more that they will still have it.  This time I really lucked out and with the white, they had a bolt that hadn't been opened yet.  The gray was a different story.  They were completely out of it at my store and were waiting for them to make more.  Thankfully I went to the JoAnn's in Westlake and found it.  Now I have plenty.
2. Be very precise in cutting the pattern if you want everything to fall into place later.  My problem with this was that I was making my own templates.  For the circle pattern I had to find something that was a 12 " diameter so I used a dinner plate.  It still wasn't perfect and it showed later.  Hopefully I'm the only one who will be able to tell. 
3. The quilting process itself needs to be thought through.  The pattern showed a diagram of how it should be quilted at the end of the piecing.  I found out that would not work for me very quickly. I needed to sew each row and quilt it before sewing it to the main quilt.  That way I would not have a bunch of quilt to the right of my needle and would make it very difficult to work with.
4. This kind of ties in with the quilting process because sometimes you need to change your sewing room to accommodate it. With the help of my hubby, we set up a 6' table and moved my sewing table around so when I quilted this the bulk of the quilt would follow the table.  It worked pretty well.  I also waited until I was ready to do all my quilting to change the room.   I also found out that my back will be more comfortable if I have a higher ironing table. 
5. The last thing I realized was that I need a completion date to keep me on track.  I guess that's why I'm able to finish so much right before Christmas.  This was a more open-ended deadline and I got very lazy with it. 

So there you have it.  By the way this quilt will go to Lesley who picked out all the material and layout.  It was supposed to go with her new couch at the time but she no longer has that.  I also wanted something that would stand up to the dogs and machine washing, hence all the machine quilting.  And as you can see I learned a lot from the process.  Enjoy, Les.