Lightning Strikes Quilt

One of my goals for the summer has been to finish up some of my "Works in Progress" in my sewing room. I love to make purses and quilts. I have about six project that I need to finish. You can see other quilt tops I have completed HERE and HERE.

The quilt I am working on this week is called Lightning Strikes. It is a type of Bargello quilt. I started this quilt a couple of years ago with a group of other quilters. For some reason, I just couldn't wrap my mind around how to put the quilt together. I had all the strips cut out and got together with the group so that our "teacher" could show us how to put the quilt together. I worked with the group for that one Saturday, and I hadn't touched the quilt since that day!

One of the advantages to having time off from work this summer is that I can take the time to quietly work on projects. I really just needed my mind to be free of clutter and stress and to take time to read through the directions. The quilt is really not difficult and lots of fun!


Here in this first picture is the bolt of fabric (yes, I said bolt!) which was my inspiration fabric for the quilt. I pulled all the other fabrics from the colors in this fabric. In each color family, I got fabrics that went from light to dark in value. You can see on my swatch sheet that I have little swatches of each of the TWENTY fabrics in the quilt.

Here is a picture of how the quilt will look when it is done. Of course, in my colors! It looks stunning, complicated and really impressive in person.

A little closer picture of the swatches. The pattern for this quilt appeared in an issue of Australian Patchwork and Quilting.

These are pictures of how I am keeping the different widths of my strips organized.




These pictures are the guide for the order of sewing of the strips. The white pieces of paper on the photo above help me to keep the row I am working on isolated from the rest of the pattern.


These are the strip sets that I cut the different widths of strips from.

Here is the picture of my quilt top in progress. You can already see how great it looks. I can hardly wait to put more rows on to see the pattern developing even better. I have to stop for the day, though--my neck muscles are killing me! I am going to bed early to rest up and start again tomorrow.

Since I am finishing up projects started years ago, I feel like I am being frugal. I bought all of these fabrics before discovering Dave Ramsey and starting our Total Money Makeover. We have now paid off all of our consumer debt and I don't feel guilty having all of this fabric. I just need to continue using it up.

When I am finished, I will have a beautiful, one-of-a-kind quilt for my bed. I think it will be a higher quality than anything I could buy in a store

Now that is being kind of frugal---right?

Be sure to visit Life as Mom and check out Frugal Fridays.

Also, check out Patchwork Times and see what other folks are working on at her post What's on Your Design Wall.