I am making a Quilt

Hi all, I haven't had time to post recently as I have been busy at work but I have the bank holiday weekend off and have to say, have put my time this evening to good work.

I purchased a rotary cutter and plastic ruler at a cost of £25.00. Yes I know, costly but I have been collecting scraps of material to make a quilt, some bunting and maybe curtains for my daughters room. Of course I haven't even finished my sons room yet but sadly, thats a job for hubs who has also been working hard. This weekend, we hope to get Max's room painted and begin to lay the beautiful new flooring which is from Screwfix. It's whitewashed oak and is really lush.

Anyway I am waffling now. I have included in no particular order a picture of the cutter & plastic ruler, the fabric and where I am at. I wanted a really eclectic set of fabrics in all colours, not just pink or girly colours.

My last patchwork attempt was a cushion, which I used square cards for. This being a more ambitious project, I didn't use templates. The one thing a rotary cutter & ruler will give you is an exact square/other shape. So by using the lines next to the needle on my sewing machine, I free sewed the patches together. Also I didn't want it to be too busy so alternated each patterned square with a white embroderie anglais one. Another thing that is extremely important is to iron, iron, and iron again. It really helps with the finished thing.

I also learnt something from an online tutorial from a woman who, instead of finishing each bit of sewing with a back & forwards motion, just puts a small bit of fabric in to leave you machine ready for the next patch. You end up producing what looks like bunting and as you are going to seam it with the next row, it doesn't matter. Very time saving. Hopefully you can see what I mean in the second picture down.