someday I will have a plan!

A couple of years ago my son gave me a "Java" Jelly Roll. As I was creating the quilt, my daughter kept saying how much she liked it....so I gave it to her for her birthday! My younger daughter then started saying that she liked it too, and would steal it one day!

So ....I started collecting bits of "coffee" fabric whenever I saw some..to start a similar quilt for my younger daughter. But, it seems like this quilt was fraught with frustration,  right from the start!

First.... I kept changing my mind about what I wanted to do with this fabric...

But finally settled on a simple square in a square type pattern.
 I cut a 4-1/2" square, then a 2" strip for the first border, and a 3"strip for the second border. As I went along, I decided that I needed some of the backing fabric to add a bit of colour to the front...

. ...which meant that I was short fabric for the back. I pieced together every little bit of leftovers that I had... both my DH and myself busy with our calculators adding and dividing to see if we could make it work....but it turned out OK.

I was a bit short for the batting too, so had to zigzag a couple of pieces together. This quilt was bigger than I had anticipated. It finished at 85" x 92"

Then I ran out of thread....TWICE!! while I was quilting this..  Really...there must be some kind of formula to figure out how much thread you are going to need ...right??

Then the final straw...as I was finishing sewing on the binding....I was about 10" too short!! How could that happen?? I had even measured and was sure I had enough!! I couldn't get any matching fabric, so used some of the beige coloured fabric from the quilt top...and pretended that I planned it that way :)  Really, you can hardly see it anyway!

But it is finished...my last finish for 2012...and in time for my daughters birthday too! Hope she likes it because this quilt really kicked my a***!!

But it is a finish....so linking up to TGIFF over at Sparrow in Flight today!