While working on the cat quilt in December, I developed a block-a-day habit. I didn't realize it at the time, but when that quilt was done I immediately wanted to start something to take its place.
I wanted to use favorite blue and green fabrics, with low volume as a background. This fantastic block by Rachel of Wooden Spoon caught my eye on flickr. The proportions are great, and the 5" low volume squares are 5 x 5", so precut charms can be used if available. I pulled out my low volume fabric and made piles of small and large squares.
The one-a-day block schedule has become a great warm up for me. There are days I head into the studio and become overwhelmed, not knowing where to begin. This process allows me to go in there and get started right away — a way to break the ice, so to speak (pun intended, as there are 8' icicles hanging off the back of the house at the moment).
My goal is to make a king-size quilt for our bed. I already have a fabulous Art Gallery Fabrics teal fabric purchased for the back; it's a great motivator that keeps me from downgrading to queen or twin-size. If I stick to my block-a-day plan, I should have a quilt top in a few months. I also decided that there will be no repeat fabrics for the plusses, so it will take 100 different fabrics for the blue and green. Hopefully this is not overly ambitious..
One panel of my design wall is already filled. Since it's such a large quilt, I'm planning on doing it in quarters and putting the large four pieces together at the end. I recently finished the second panel of the design wall; there will be a full tutorial with printable PDF soon. The panels can be moved around the house, which is perfect for me as I don't have a wall they can be attached to. I do not know what I did without them!
This is one of the reasons I have only committed to one block per day.
This is the other reason. Disclaimer: In no way did I select Annabel's shirt. She insisted we buy it, even after it was explained to her what it meant. Perhaps she was more enthusiastic about it after I shared the meaning with her. Hm.
While working on these plus blocks, I'm learning to use the Quilt Design Tool on Threadbias. I'm a Mac person, and as Electric Quilt hasn't come out with anything yet that I can use, I was thrilled to be able to play around on on this site. As the 11 3/4" (unfinished) plus block was already designed, I plugged in the dimensions of the pieces, replicated the blocks to fit the quilt size I was after, and with a click of a button I had fabric requirements. This will be useful as I continue to create my own patterns.
The bottom two rows are still in process. If I skip a day, it's easy to make it up the next as these blocks go together quickly.
I promise to not over Instagram my progress!
xo Karin
