Progress Report: THE QUILT

Hi everybody.

I'm really glad I decided to work on this quilt in the background of other projects. Because you could spend your life making squares and subsequently, triangles. Six hours on Saturday I was at the sewing machine, and all I did was sew small squares together and make... larger squares.

COFFEE. Yes, please.

I mean, it was really fun to see how my fabrics looked together, and I felt accomplished at the end of the session, but somewhere around the 4-hour mark I grew a bit weary.

I completed 21 12"x12" blocks for the quilt construction.

Cat in the bottom corner. She was, you know, "helping"

PINOT NOIR. Yes, please.

I loooooooove the dark multi-color fabric! I wish I bought more of it :/

My colors are kind of all over the map, so to speak. Some are really dark, others are really light. I suppose that's my taste - if it's dark it's black and if it isn't it's probably white or light gray. At least I'm consistent?? Anyway, I'll either follow my original mix-and-match idea for block placement or I'll arrange them in an ombre effect from the top left corner to the bottom right. I'm kind of leaning towards the ombre, now that I look at the blocks side by side.

For this first quilt project I'm totally following directions in a book: Simply Retro, by Camille Roskelley.



I've chosen the Playground pattern, as it seemed simple and was already in a decently large size without me having to do lots of math to make it bigger. My fabrics are a mix of stash and specially-bought fabrics. Working on these blocks taught me that the more expensive quilt material does make a difference, as the hand feels more supported and I think it will support the hand-stitching much better.  Did I mention I plan on hand-quilting this beast? I can only imagine how my Granny would feel if I did it by machine...

Unrelated News

Husband and I are going to have a family gathering in May of this year so our immediate families can finally meet one another. That's got to be the only problem with eloping - families never meet. The other consequences I can deal with (I mean, they're not my favorite, but they're manageable). I've thought that my siblings would get along with husband's siblings, and that our parents, for as different as they are, would find common ground in many things, or at the very least enjoy each other's company.

I decided to make invitations to send to everyone with travel info, food info, and other little details. Naturally, this meant purchasing cards of different shapes and colors from one of the most brilliant stores in the world - Paper Source!!!! - and experimenting with pens, markers, and handwritten fonts, among other things. 

There isn't much to plan for this gathering, but my mom and I figured out that both families can eat on dishes that were either given to my parents at their wedding or are otherwise heirlooms, which is cool. I'm excited for everyone to finally get to know one another.