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Have you ever started a project, worked about half way through it and wondered, "What in the HECK was I thinking when I started this!?!?!" Okay, well, I'm SO there. Many of you have listened to me rant on, and on, and on about the quilt I am making for my daughter. There hasn't been an easy part of this project. Scratch that. The easiest part was shopping for the fabric. Then it got difficult.

I should have seen little red flags popping up from the beginning. You know really obvious things like, maybe the fact that the blocks are Hexagons! Hello! This just screams set in seams. Did I listen? NO. I just kept happily sewing little misshapen hexagonal blocks.

Perhaps, I should have been clued in when I had to rip the quilt apart the first time. NO. That would be silly. Then I would have missed all the fun of having to rip it apart and re-sew it the second time. Word to the wise. When making a quilt for a bed, measure the bed first! Seems so simple, doesn't it? Apparently, I forgot that step. When I drug the quilt out this past week to quilt it for the Blogger's Quilt Festival (click to see some really amazing quilts), I was amazed to find that the quilt did not fit the bed. Out came the seam-ripper once again.

Once it was the correct size I was able to quilt it. That proved to be challenging but not, thankfully, painful. I did have to secure many, many, many loose edges. I quilted flower petal shapes in the brightly colored areas and leaf shapes in the green areas. After the quilting was finished and I took it out to photograph it. I got super psyched! Almost done! Not.

The quilt has straight edges on the top and bottom, easy enough to bind. However, the sides are uneven. As I began to contemplate the binding of the edges I realized that I would need bias cut binding to finish this quilt. Okay, haven't done that before but I was on a roll.

Did you know that there is actually a formula for finding the total number of square inches needed to cut bias binding? Well surprise! There is and it goes something like this....

Step 1 2l×2w+10=c

Step 2 √2c=total square inches needed

( Add 10 inches to your total circumference. Then multiply this total times 2. Once you have that take the square root of the total for the number of square inches needed. )Whoa! Fortunately for those of us who are less mathematical than your average pre-algebra student there are much easier ways to cut bias bindings.

With bias binding cut, sewn and pressed I stared attaching it to the quilt. WooHoo. Hold on a minute their little lady. (Insert western accent) Not so fast. Did you forget that there are still pieces to applique onto that there quilt?

Ah, Yes. Yes I did.

Once again my seam-ripper proved it's value, thank you quilting gods.

Now I sit posting about a quilt I had hoped to have finished to show in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. Instead I have 53 centers to applique on before I can bind this quilt. (For you mathematical quilters who I know are out there. 60 centers minus the 7 centers I already appliqued on.) At 15 minutes a center that is... way to many minutes to have it done before the end of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.