A bigger project: Quilting time

 If you follow me on Instagram (@ruth_crafts), you might remember that just before my son was born, I made Elizabeth Hartmann's large Hazel Hedgehog quilt.

It reminded me how much I like patchwork, and the benefit of the smaller size was that the resulting quilt was relatively straightforward to machine quilt on my dressmaking machine. And so, I've recently embarked on another (and there might be more coming soon - no, I'm not pregnant!).

The single biggest challenge with these quilts is the complexity of the cutting list. I've made more traditional patchwork quilts in the past, and while there are a lot of pieces to cut, they are in a relatively limited set of sizes. For my current project I'm making 4 lions, and that required 41 differently-sizes pieces in 2 colourways, with most pieces being cut at least twice. Cutting all of these correctly, and labelling them for later, takes a lot of concentration - and quite a bit of time.

It had been supposed to be a nap-time job, but in the end I decided to commit to a day off and really get it done... and it took most of that day between nursery runs.

 

 

As for the labels, though it seems wasteful, I've found I have to put a pin and paper label in every piece, or I'll never be able to identify them later. A basket for each colourway also helped!

 In fact, once the cutting out was done, I've found that the design is put together in such a way as to positively reward being made in chunks of time: 5-10 pieces together make an element or sub-block, and in the end, a final 6 strips/blocks come together to make the full lion. The second pair, having the benefit of familiarity, were even quicker to pull together, and so I hope to have a full quilt top by the end of this weekend... waiting only for the wadding I've ordered to arrive, and time to quilt and bind.

(This is the Lion Block from the Spectacular Savannah pattern. Yes, I also have the Fantastic Forest pattern. And the North Stars. No, I don't see that as a problem.)