Bars of Gold - border #1

I've made a lot of progress on my quilt! After sewing all of the strips together I just needed to attach them with the yellow-ish fabric in the picture below and then add a border (the blue-ish fabric in the picture below), make a back and then quilt it. It's turning out that sewing is a really great study break though I am finding that it's easy to set small sewing goals as a break - "I'll just sew 3 strips together and then back to homework" - but it's much harder to keep them - "Oops, I finished sewing all the strips together!"
This week I sewed the strips together with the yellow-ish fabric. I love it! I absolutely love how the colors are coming out! I don't have a lot of space for sewing so I've been leaving the half-finished pieces on my ironing board which is near-permanently set up in my living room so I see it all the time. I felt like the colors were too bold and the prints were too weird together but using the soft yellow design broke up some of the brightness and tied everything together. This is turning out to be a very bright, happy quilt!

I still a fairly new sewer and I have a lot to learn. This week I learned that I can't measure to save my soul and though I am getting better at cutting straight lines I have a long way to go. The pictures for the original pattern have all of the bars lining up with one another evenly. Mine are sort of even but not quite. There was a dramatic different in the quality of some of the fabric I used and not all of my fat quarters were the same size so in some areas the pieces just couldn't be the same measurements. In other cases I just can't cut straight :-) I also realized that when I started adding the soft yellow fabric between the strips I should have made sure I started pinning them all from the same end. I ended up having to do some major trimming before attaching the strips to the top and bottom. It worked out and I am still happy with how it's coming out but I am definitely filing these discoveries for my next project!