Let's Go, Hokies!

What sparked my interest most in sewing this past year was Booger's idea to make a wedding gift, namely a quilt.  I thought it was a great idea so here I am creating a quilt for a wedding present.  There were so many ideas floating around it took me awhile to decide on something but I always knew it had to be Hokie themed!  I'm making this quilt for one of my good friends who I went to school with at Virginia Tech, Go Hokies!

Here are my initial plans to make a VT symbol out of half square triangles (HSTs).  Yes, that funny looking green paper is engineer paper, I came up with this idea while working on some homework...

I don't know how I would live without engineer paper!

For my first quilt I did a Block of the Month with Craftsy but I learned that you need to be VERY precise for everything to line up.  Being a beginner sewer I went looking for ideas that didn't need as much precision and I discovered improvisational piecing.  I got some inspiration from Craftsy's Improvisational Piecing Class Jacquie Gering (affiliate link).  I adapted the crazy piecing idea and ran with it!

Here's what I came up with as a design

I gave up coloring the rest of the blocks, I was too excited to get started!

All the crazy priced blocks are supposed to be offset to look like Hokie stone, if you've ever been to Blacksburg you know what I'm talking about.

Most of the buildings on campus are made from Hokie stone, isn't it beautiful!

Moving from the design phase to execution was a tough one that required lots of cutting but the great thing about it was I didn't have to measure a thing!  Thanks to my Intrepid Twin we got most of the cutting done in no time!

Booger is an honorary Hokie, we grew up in Blacksburg

Booger had come out to visit me for the weekend in small town Missouri.  She had a long weekend for Veteran's Day Weekend and we spend most of it sewing!  It was great to have her here to help me get started on my improvisational piecing.  We worked together on the first block and here's how it came out

Looks a lot like Hokie stone, right?  1 done, many more to go....

Working on my new (used) sewing machine

I'm super excited about this quilt not only because of the awesome maroon and orange colors but also because the only measurements I need to take are of the final block size.  It's really quick to piece the blocks together and it's a great way to be creative because it CRAZY piecing!

Check back for my progress on the quilt, hopefully I'll get it finished in 1 month for the wedding!
Linking up to: WiP (work in progress) Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced Quilts!