Make a quilt

It’s best to be a bit zen about the sewing, and the ironing (oh, the constant ironing): don’t try to hurry, don’t expect to finish all the blocks today, stay calm….

so it’s a weekend activity, not a week night one

I have finally settled on the fabrics. A mustardy yellow with small figures; a dark-brick red with small figures, a dark grey-blu with a slight traced leaf pattern, and a medium-brown also with a trace pattern.

Now all I have to do is cut out a bazillion pieces and sew them together and quilt the damn thing…

Wondering why I got into this in the first place.

I’ve now done some sample blocks and I have picked my fabrics. But I still need to find a khaki-brown with a sparse print on it, which is proving elusive. Also I have one more combination I want to try out, with a dark red.

Frustration that I have to work this weekend and won’t be able to do quilty things. :(

It’s been a quiet week at work this week, so I’ve made good use of my employer’s resources to plot a pattern for the patchwork and for the quilting. Here is the patchwork pattern:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21213105@N00/111578819/

And here is the quilting pattern:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21213105@N00/111578820/

I know they’re very ambitious but this is something I only want to do once so I figure I might was well be spectacular. I’m quite prepared for this to take a few years :)

AutoCAD (which my employer kindly provides for drawing brackets, screws, wiring diagrams etc) is brilliant for working out patterns because you can scale on the screen easily – work out your pieces, work out how many of each shape you need, work out the area of fabric required; centre your pattern; work out how many repeats of the quilting pattern you need; and then print everything at exactly the right size to make it all work.

Over the weekend I had the brilliant idea of buying a whole lot of men’s shirts from the Op Shop for the fabric – I am invisaging soft cottons in different stripes and plains. And maybe picking up a few daggy floral skirts with elastic waistbands from the women’s rack, for extra fabricky goodness.