Class 130 Quilt Project

Lesson 7: First Quilt Project
It says I get to choose between Harriet's Woodland Winter Quilt, or Carrie's Cowboy Corral.  They both use strips, but are each very different in the way they are done. Since this is not really my "first" project, I'm going with the Cowboy Corral. It requires Fussy Cutting, something I've never done before. 

I searched the quilt store, and the fabric is $10+/yard.  I want to make as many projects as possible, without spending a fortune, so I'm hunting JoAnn's. With coupons, I was able to buy all the fabric for the top for about $15.  Since I'm documenting all this well after I finished, I only have the picture of the finished piecing.

Instead of a cowboy theme, it's a bird theme.  It's really the only fabric I found with the right sized motif I could use. After about 20 of these fussy cuts, I was feeling like there MUST be an easier way.  I think the cutting out the birds from the fabric took longer than the entire piecing of the quilt.

As with all the projects, we only get instructions for the piecing of the squares.  The borders and quilting I see is a lesson all of it's own at the end of the book. I'm choosing to do all the classes/lessons in order, so I will be putting this unfinished top away for now, and move on.

BTW, in the photo, you see the 2 squares I started from the Thimbleberries kit I referred to in my first post. I LOVE the fabrics, but my accuracy needed some fine tuning, hence, this "class".  I'll come back to it after we work on vol. 3 with triangles.