30s Sampler Quilt

My dear sis-in-law and I came up with the brilliant idea to make sampler quilts together. We are each making a quilt following the same pattern; she is using fabrics from her stash, and I had to buy all new fabric because this is just my fourth quilt and I don't have a stash yet. So our quilts should turn out very different, even though we're using the same pattern, which is part of the fun.

This is my first block. According to the pattern, it's called Homespun. I really like the fabric in the center square; it looks like an old-fashioned tablecloth to me. I'm pretty happy with how the block turned out overall, too. It was my first attempt at half-square triangles, and I think they look pretty good for a first try.

Ellen and I had originally planned to make one block a week, which, by our calculations, would give us plenty of time to finish the quilt tops, sandwich the tops to the backing, quilt the quilts, and bind them -- in other words, to finish the entire quilts -- by the end of the year. (We started in January).

Well, we're already a little bit behind, but she has been working on some other really cute projects, and I have been working on things that have nothing to do with quilting. But we are still plugging away at the sampler quilt, and I'm having fun with it. The idea, for me especially, since I'm so new to quilting, was for me to practice some different techniques, particularly applique, and maybe hand-piecing at some point, so I'm not really in any particular hurry to finish it.

I've already learned a bit about piecing the half-square triangles so the points come out sharp, and Ellen showed me how to do chain piecing on the sewing machine, which saves time because you don't have to stop and trim threads between every little seam that you sew. That little bit of knowledge has already made this project worth it!