Brooklyn's Baby Quilt

Started Brooklyn's baby quilt on Saturday after a lengthy first trip to the fabric store. I had to get all my "beginner" sewing supplies and choose some fabrics for a couple other beginner projects. I thought the quilt would be a good first project because #1 all the lines are straight and #2 it's hard to screw up; quilts don't have to look perfect to keep you warm. My baby cousin Brooklyn is a few weeks old so she's the perfect target for my first project as a hobby sewist.

When I bought the quilt kit, I thought the pieces would all be cut. Not so. So I went back to Joann's on Sunday morning to acquire a rotary tool and cutting mat (so far the cost of this quilt is somewhere around $350 if you include the cost of the sewing machine). The rotary tool did make it easier, but I'm still having trouble cutting straight lines. I have always had this trouble, and I'm not sure if it is a skill that will develop with time or if I'm SOL like I am with most physical skills like bowling and walking while chewing gum.

I started out really good, pinning and sewing, but eventually gave up on pinning the small pieces (3x3 squares). It was at this point that my husband came along and started sewing together the larger blocks (4 of the 3x3 squares and then one of those with a 5.5 x 5.5 square) while I mostly pressed seems and cut fabric for my next project. We got about 1/3 of all the sewing done when the machine started to rebel against me.

If anyone reads this and knows what I'm doing wrong, please let me. Sometimes the machine seems to pull the thread from the top into the bobbin. The result of this seems to be a tangled mess of thread, plus the fabric gets pulled down in the machine toward the bobbin. I think this is symptomatic of sewing with the foot up, but the foot is not up. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens enough to make me wonder what I'm doing to it. My husband got pretty frustrated about the whole thing and gave up. So we still have another afternoon or so worth of sewing to finish it up. I also have to buy some batting, which will inevitably raise the cost of this quilt to an even $500. Just kidding, but barely.