Slow progress

My quilt for Sam is going very slowly, there has just been too much going on this week and trying to get lots of sewing time has not worked well. He's going to get a quilt IOU for his birthday instead.

Here's a look at the fabric I'm using (all new at the moment again, I'm sure I can work a bit of old in somewhere though!), and where I'm up to so far.

It's going to be a quilt with a 'maths' theme, with a few cucumbers thrown in too! Sounds strange but it's very Sam! I'm doing a 'quilt as you go' quilt, so I've got lots of squares cut out from an old wool blanket for my 'middle' and I'm sewing the 'front' straight on to these squares. I wanted to quilt each of the squares with the mathematical symbols in a different way to reflect the particular symbol on there, so this kind of quilt as you go method works well since I'm quilting each square individually rather than quilting the whole quilt at the end (have a look back here for more information the last time I made one along these lines - Maria's Picnic Rug)

There's an 'I am Sam' fabric (from a Dr Seus range!), and the cucumber fabric and then the rest of the fabrics all have a link to maths.

The yellow 'plus' sign fabric has got the number 'Pi' printed in a check all over it!

Some of the fabric came from Bug Fabric and some I got from Spoonflower. Spoonflower is a site that lets you design your own fabric or wallpaper, but it also has a wide range of unusual fabrics designed by other people that you can purchase. It's not the cheapest place to buy fabric, predictably, but if you're looking for something unusual or want to design your own then it's worth a look (Theo is very keen to design some fabric of his own on there!).

So I've done 6 squares and I have another 9 to go - I reckon I've got about another 7 hours of sewing before it's done. But at least I've got everything cut out already now. Not quite sure when I'm going to fit in another 7 hours of sewing though. We're away this weekend and then Sam is on holiday next week - as much as I think he will quite appreciate a quilt as a present I think he'll appreciate spending time going for walks by the beach much more than sitting around watching me sew his quilt! So don't hold your breath on seeing it finished quickly basically!

Back tomorrow with a photo, Sally.

PS Feels like only a couple of days ago I was writing that last week, I really don't know where this week has gone.