rainy day quilting therapy

so sometimes i have really bad days. those days are usually associated with "that time of month" but lets be honest. a period stinks for anybody, let alone this girl who wants nothing more than to have no more periods (for at least 9 months anyway). needless to say i had a rough weekend. but i decided i wasn't going to let a little ol' period get me down. so a few months ago i decided to work on things i loved once a month (get where i'm going with this) to make me stop thinking about what a little period means.

this month my project was a quilt. it is a big project but a needed a big distraction. i have wanted to finish a quilt for so long now. mr's family are big quilters so i felt like i wasn't fitting in unless i was one as well. i have started way too many and decided it was time i finished one. i actually bought the fabric months ago but never could get around to getting all my sewing stuff out. this weekend was the perfect time. bring on the basket weave quilt. i hate cutting tiny little pieces so this was the perfect quilt for me. just long strips of fabric. i can handle that. 

i spent a couple of days cutting all my fabric and then yesterday decided to put together the quilt top. spence even joined in (and was a lot better at the weave than i was). it was a lot easier with two people. we actually had a blast working on this. we turned on the disney channel and just relaxed all afternoon/evening quilting. i uses this tutorial but made a few changes.

i wanted my quilt to be a bit larger. so i doubled everything. i also added another color. i used 2 yards of white fabric and a little less than 1 yard of each color fabric. i cut 21 long-way 2 inch strips of the white and 9 wide-way 2 inch strips of each color. i tried weaving one at a time but decided to pull all the white strips down and weave the color into the white. i taped down the white strips once i had them all pulled down. 

the weave took a bit longer than expected (about 2.5 hours) but i was making dinner in-between rows. like i said the mr helped so that was nice. he would weave and then i would go and "clean-up" the rows a bit. 

once we finally finished the weave i tapped everything down. now i have to go try and find freezer paper in chicago. why is it so hard to find crafty stuff in a big city??? for now the cute little top is just hanging out in our family room. 

i'm going to add a little navy boarder to make the quilt a bit bigger. then hopefully the backing fabric and binding will come so i can completely finish. this is the closest i've ever gotten to finishing a quilt. i guess i just needed a good heartbreaking period to get me motivated...haha! 

so yeah, maybe this weekend was hard. but it's okay. and honestly working on projects for just me make it a bit better. maybe i'm not making baby quilts, finding pregnancy workouts or deciding on nursery things but i'm growing in my own way. heck i just made a quilt top (a simple one but hey a quilt top nonetheless). working on this dang quilt made today so much easier to face! 

happy monday. hopefully by next monday i'll have a more updated quilt to show you!!!