Another quilt

No, I don't have the pink quilt completed, but I have both the front and back pieced, ready to layer with batting, carefully pin, and decide if my idea of a quilting pattern is too complicated for me. I'm really pleased with both the quilt and the backing, but I have complicated matters for myself by piecing the backing so that I must (absolutely must) have the backing layered evenly with the front or the quilt will be off. And then there's my idea of a quilting pattern. We'll see.

I started the pink quilt about the first of September, and I just took the last seam on the backing today - that's just a little more than two months. Of course, I've done a lot of other things in the meantime, but I would suggest that a majority of my sewing time the last two months has been spent on this quilt. But that includes both the front and the back, and there has been a lot of down time in the last month while I diverted my thoughts to other things.

Because we're getting ready for some traveling in the next several months, I'm going to block out time, after I get my next top and back pieced, to sit down and machine quilt both quilts. That should be worth a few good books on tape!

I have to be careful that I don't bite off more than I can chew. I have a way of doing that. Judy suggested, Saturday, that I might leave these to be quilted by the next generation. Oh, I hope not! At least for the pink one. Maybe this new one. (I'll try hard, Donna!) With each quilt, I want to do something I've not done before - that's not hard since I've rarely ever quilted before.

So, this is the new one that I'll start cutting in the next day or two and hopefully have it pieced by Thanksgiving (running a little short on time here). I guess a lot depends on what else gets my attention between now and then. Hmmmm...

I like working on the diagonal (on point) because I think it does a lot to make the quilt more interesting without much effort. All these blocks are 9 inches, and I think the construction is a little more simple, especially since the quilt is smaller.

Thirty of the blocks are strip pieced (see above), and twenty are 9-patch blocks. I think strip piecing makes a quilt interesting, too. The only problem with this particular strip-pieced block is that, except for the two outer strips, each strip is made up of two different fabrics. Unless I come up with a brainstorm while I'm sleeping, that will mean that I'll need to piece each of these separately. There are 10 strips (9 seams) and 8 strips are made of two shorter strips (8 more seams).

I'll use a lot of straight lines to machine quilt this one because it's for a boy (young man), and I've always understood that circles are feminine and straight lines are masculine. The fabrics in these pictures approximate the fabrics I'll use, but they aren't exact. There are no flowers in the fabrics I'll use, so that makes the overall quilt more masculine, too.

After using a spreadsheet to draw the pink quilt, I decided to invest in EQ5 (Electric Quilt), on sale at Joann Fabrics. The software has a lot of shortcomings, but as I learn to understand it better, it has a lot of plus points, too. It actually gives me fabric requirements, but I worked them out on a spreadsheet because I trust my own calculations more than I trust the calculations from this automatic software. I purchased the software primarily so that I could easily create designs and then easily modify them. I created the picture of the design in EQ5. I probably went through 20 iterations before I decided on one that looked interesting but which didn't seem above my level of competence (plus a little challenge). This quilt will be smaller than the three I've made previously - more like a twin bed size. I don't know that I'll make another large quilt. Well, maybe one - but I kind of doubt it.