Thursday 9 January 2014

Theo's Insect Quilt

It was definitely time I made a start on Theo's birthday quilt today. I'm in serious danger of running late with it (surely not, doesn't sound like me at all!).
 
I've been mulling over what kind of design I'm going to make for a few days. And eventually I decided that it was about time I tried a properly intentional 'wonky' block. I found a very helpful tutorial over on this blog - From the Blue Chair.  
And this morning I emptied out my bag in which I've been collecting insect related fabrics for the last couple of years, and prepared to cut! Here's all my fabric - very creepy crawlyish!


A lot of these came from Bug Fabric

A bit closer...






When I started out I thought I'd make 70 squares (7 across, 10 down). And I got 52 cut out reasonably quickly. I left 18 so that I can be a bit more particular with my fabric placement on those once I know what I'm doing with the sewing part, especially with some of the larger print fabrics. I still had a little time left before needing to collect Maria, so I thought I'd have a go at slicing into a few of my squares and sewing them back together wonky style.

It was trickier than it looked in the tutorial! It is very easy to sew them back together incorrectly, which unfortunately means you have to properly concentrate the whole time. If my sewing isn't being creative (and therefore fun!) in some way (ie applique, machine embroidery etc) then I've discovered I do quite like 'mindless-sewing-to-relax', rather than 'concentrate-on-not-making-mistakes-sewing'. I managed to get 4 done and quickly revised my original idea of 70 squares to 63! 70 would have been far too big! It may be that, after sewing a few more of the wonky squares, 63 is a little on the large side too! We'll see.

Anyway, here are my first 2:


Only 59 still to go!

Back tomorrow with a photo, Sally.

2 comments:

  1. That's going to look awesome. I'm not brave enough to try wonky blocks yet - to be fair my normal blocks often end up wonky!

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  2. I like normal blocks being wonky, mine often are too! I don't think quilts should be 'perfect'! And I think it may be a while before I try these 'wonky' blocks again. Although if they were quite a bit bigger and not so many, maybe it wouldn't be too bad.

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