Squares

Prepare yourself.

This quilt is going to drag on and on.  Gone are the days of feverishly cutting and piecing, getting lost in the fabric and calmly hand-stitching while watching TV.

It took me a week to cut the pieces for this small quilt.  I have no idea how long it will take to actually piece it together.  I'm not sure how much I can wax on about the incremental steps each week, but I'll try to keep it somewhat interesting.

As I said last week, this is a quilt for Pruin's best friend down the road.  It seemed only fitting that Pruin help.  Of course he couldn't do much more than babble his agreement or criticism from his spot on the floor next to me, but at least I don't feel guilty about neglecting my son while I try to do something unrelated to his upkeep.

During last week's heatwave we camped out on the floor (where is was coolest) and cut out squares.  Despite picking out seven fabrics, I concentrated on the shirt given to me by my mama friend.  To my mind this is the centerpiece of the quilt so the other fabrics should act as compliments instead of stealing the show.

This decision made it easier to figure out how many squares I needed.  Actually, that makes it sound organized and intentional.  Really, I cut as much as I could out of the shirt and that is going to be enough.

I can't bring myself to plan the design.  I find I enjoy the quilting process a lot more when I just let it flow a bit.  Of course I have yet to follow a pattern so maybe I would enjoy the direction and structure (especially as my time is now limited) but there is something about the serendipity of working with 'non-traditional' fabrics.  I'm never quite sure how it's going to turn out but I find it makes the process just as satisfying as the end result.

Because the materials are somewhat wonky shapes I made templates to ensure I got every usable bit out of each shirt piece.  This doesn't always work.  I tend to slowly shave a bit off during each pass which means later pieces aren't the same size as earlier pieces.  I'm hoping it washes out in the seam allowance.

I am going for a Flying Geese pattern in this quilt.  This pattern has called to me since we started this venture so it seemed the right time to give it a go.  This is as close as I got to planning a design.  The design will come once the 'geese' are sewn together and I see what evolves.