Since beginning to sew, two and a half years ago, I haven't used patterns, so I don't have a history of making traditional quilts or having taken workshops to master sewing skills. While I have learned along the way through the doing, I am challenging myself to hone the skills for finer finishing - I want to improve my technique. Also, I am curious to see what I will learn by following a pattern, and that's how this project began. The pattern is from a book and I've copied measurements and templates. Unfortunately, the book does not include detailed instructions for how to sew the center piece together and unexpected challenges have already arisen for me. When choosing the fabrics from my stash, I wanted to have co-ordinating colours, variety and to adhere to a watermelon theme. The checked fabric reminds me of a picnic tablecloth, and if you click on the top photo to enlarge it, you'll see that those circles on the black fabric are watermelon rounds and that the red/pink swirling fabric is made up of tiny checks that mirror the checked fabric as well as have a 'seedy' feel since they are many little bits. Also, the circular swirls are a reference to the watermelon rounds, spots on the green inner border and roughly of the roundness of a watermelon itself. Locating the right combination of fabrics from what I already have involved alot of auditioning - and then, when I cut the pieces, I discovered I had to make changes since I did not have quite enough of two of the chosen fabrics. I had planned to make a mitred inner border, but since the instructions called for a longer strip of fabric then what I had, I went with the above look. Also, the black fabric from which I cut scalloped shaped pieces, couldn't accomodate two pieces that I needed. Since each side has 3 scalloped pieces, I decided to make the center one a different fabric - which required more auditioning and not finding anything quite right or large enough. So I've decided to use a different center scallop piece for each side. I'm noticing surprises for me about what works with what - I thought the red swirly piece would be my favourite for the center scallop, but when I overlaid it after it was sewn in with another of my choices that was green, I noticed that the contrast of the green beside the pink checks looks much better. I was more focused on matching the center scallop to the inner watermelon square - and while that's a part of the whole, I can see that getting the order right with these individual pieces is a challenge. When I normally create as I go, I think this is less of a problem because I'm only matching what's already there, not trying to match something that is several steps down the road. After I sewed the four green border strips to the central square, I noticed that in spite of my careful measuring and use of a quarter inch foot, some of the border were not square and/or extended past the edge of the border piece they squared up with. What to do - because if the border edges aren't even, then surely that would create problems when I would sew the scalloped border on. So I retrimmed everything so it's a large square again, only I know that from the center watermelon square to the edge of each border is not the same dimension. Surely this is not how it's supposed to be? Next I followed an instruction from the book to mark a quarter inch from the edge of the green border and from the sewed scallop and check strip. Only the edge of the scalloped and checked pieces was longer then the green border - not to mention very uneven again. So, I did some more trimming. I'm not sure how this will work out when I sew the corner pieces on. The above photo shows that the quarter inch mark for the checked fabric is right where the green border piece begins and the quarter inch mark for the green piece is another quarter inch in from that. Hmmm. Isn't using a pattern supposed to eliminate these sorts of problems?
I had been working with tones - wanting to use one of my snow dyed pieces of fabric in a table topper.
But somehow, it wasn't working - the colours looked good together and matched ones in the snow dyed linen, but the contrast of their flat solid colour and geometric shapes was too great. So I decided to go for a walk.
Very cold and fresh and the tide was out.
I finished the final bit of free motion quilting in the center of my watermelon quilt today and I wish I could iron it, but my iron is kaput! So I will be shopping for a new one very soon, as this is a tool I can't be without. I showed my quilt to the art quilt group I belong to last night and learned that I might have made it much more easily without virtually any handstitching by using a pillow case inside out method and cutting a gap in the center of the batting to turn the whole quilt inside out and then stitching that bit up. Also, they suggested that the corners wouldn't need to be sewn in separately, but could be added to one side and attached as a whole side. Good ideas if I ever do a scalloped edge again. We also saw samples of fabric 'bark' and heard about how to simulate it using a wide range of materials. 
I've finished sewing the pieces together and as I predicted, the corners were not an exact fit by any means. It almost seemed that I ended up putting them together intuitively - or maybe I should say 'randomly' and 'fortunately'. I know I was surprised when they worked out - my method after stitching each side of the corner on and discovering gaps and misalignments was to sew it from the backside, aiming for the seam of the border, which actually worked out not too badly. This morning I sandwiched the top, and quilted it in the ditch, but only partially. The close-up photos show how I've basted (who me? This is a first - I'm more 'attached' to glue:)) the top's edge, then cut away the batting flush with the top edge and then cut the edge of the backing fabric. 
Since beginning to sew, two and a half years ago, I haven't used patterns, so I don't have a history of making traditional quilts or having taken workshops to master sewing skills. While I have learned along the way through the doing, I am challenging myself to hone the skills for finer finishing - I want to improve my technique. Also, I am curious to see what I will learn by following a pattern, and that's how this project began. The pattern is from a book and I've copied measurements and templates. Unfortunately, the book does not include detailed instructions for how to sew the center piece together and unexpected challenges have already arisen for me. When choosing the fabrics from my stash, I wanted to have co-ordinating colours, variety and to adhere to a watermelon theme. The checked fabric reminds me of a picnic tablecloth, and if you click on the top photo to enlarge it, you'll see that those circles on the black fabric are watermelon rounds and that the red/pink swirling fabric is made up of tiny checks that mirror the checked fabric as well as have a 'seedy' feel since they are many little bits. Also, the circular swirls are a reference to the watermelon rounds, spots on the green inner border and roughly of the roundness of a watermelon itself. Locating the right combination of fabrics from what I already have involved alot of auditioning - and then, when I cut the pieces, I discovered I had to make changes since I did not have quite enough of two of the chosen fabrics. I had planned to make a mitred inner border, but since the instructions called for a longer strip of fabric then what I had, I went with the above look. Also, the black fabric from which I cut scalloped shaped pieces, couldn't accomodate two pieces that I needed. Since each side has 3 scalloped pieces, I decided to make the center one a different fabric - which required more auditioning and not finding anything quite right or large enough. So I've decided to use a different center scallop piece for each side. I'm noticing surprises for me about what works with what - I thought the red swirly piece would be my favourite for the center scallop, but when I overlaid it after it was sewn in with another of my choices that was green, I noticed that the contrast of the green beside the pink checks looks much better. I was more focused on matching the center scallop to the inner watermelon square - and while that's a part of the whole, I can see that getting the order right with these individual pieces is a challenge. When I normally create as I go, I think this is less of a problem because I'm only matching what's already there, not trying to match something that is several steps down the road. After I sewed the four green border strips to the central square, I noticed that in spite of my careful measuring and use of a quarter inch foot, some of the border were not square and/or extended past the edge of the border piece they squared up with. What to do - because if the border edges aren't even, then surely that would create problems when I would sew the scalloped border on. So I retrimmed everything so it's a large square again, only I know that from the center watermelon square to the edge of each border is not the same dimension. Surely this is not how it's supposed to be? Next I followed an instruction from the book to mark a quarter inch from the edge of the green border and from the sewed scallop and check strip. Only the edge of the scalloped and checked pieces was longer then the green border - not to mention very uneven again. So, I did some more trimming. I'm not sure how this will work out when I sew the corner pieces on. The above photo shows that the quarter inch mark for the checked fabric is right where the green border piece begins and the quarter inch mark for the green piece is another quarter inch in from that. Hmmm. Isn't using a pattern supposed to eliminate these sorts of problems?