some ginger quilting

 we interrupt my regularly scheduled sewing to bring you "what the girls are doing." after a considerable hiatus, the two oldest daughters are back at the machine. in fact, this time they are at my machine.

yesterday morning, my oldest daughter came to me and said, "mom, i have an assignment for english where i have to learn a new skill, spend 5 hours working on it, and write about the experience. i was thinking maybe you could teach me to make a quilt?" i jumped on that faster than a bar of chocolate! the good news was i already had fabrics and a pattern picked out for her to work with. over a year ago i set aside a project box for teaching d1 how to make her first quilt. we've just never gotten around to it between her scheduling and my general sewing busyness elsewhere. but yesterday we did it. thank you, english class!

we're using a riley blake layer cake, moda bella basics charm pack, and the moda bake shop recipe "easy bricks quilt" by amy smart of diary of a quilter. i got a bit nervous as we got started because i've never taught anyone to quilt before! although i'm fairly confident with my own skills now, teaching someone else what to do was a little nerve wracking just in case i forgot something. i needn't have worried, of course. we just got started and kept on going.

 since we are working with precuts, there wasn't much pressing to do, but the layer cake had been sitting over a year, so the ribbons creased the top squares a bit. we talked about "pressing" while quickly flattening a few squares.

 then the rotary cutting lesson. yikes! (lovely backside photo taken by the only available photographer in the house, d2.) i have never used a riley blake layer cake before, so i don't know if it was because it's been slopped around my sewing area since December 2012 or if it just wasn't precision cut well, but the squares weren't fully square. we just ignored that and cut away. it's a first-timer quilt, anyway.

she did a great job cutting her squares in half. i had to remind her about the safety button a few times, but she seems to have the hang of it. after a few cuts, i left her to herself.

 then d2 wanted to get moving on her quilt for the church fund raising auction. we pieced a 4 sq top out of the heather bailey "nicey jane" fabrics she selected a few weeks ago (that i let her have after i ordered replacements, of course). that didn't take long at all since the top only requires 3 seams. her seams were pretty good, but a bit shy in a few spots. i might go back and reinforce the seams with a second run since this is a baby quilt being auctioned off.

 i had her pin (something i rarely do) to teach her the skill as well as to improve her accuracy.

that was it for day 1 of two daughters quilting. i finished off the quilting for "paris daydreams" when they left for their math tutoring.

this morning, we got back at it with d1 chain piecing and d2 pressing the fat quarters for her baby quilt 2.0 (boy version).

 d1 is going to be a precision quilter, i can tell. she was meticulous about lining up her pieces before sewing and careful how she sewed. i expected it to be a bit more difficult for her, but her seams look great! this pattern is so easy that it's coming together in no time.

i'm itching to work on something myself, but seeing them excited about and engaged in the sewing is pretty much as good as doing it myself. i've been hoping they would get interested for a while now. i'm so glad the opportunities presented themselves to push both of them into the quilting realm. stay tuned for their finishes, which should be coming up pretty soon.