Making a quilt takes time.  Lots and lots of time.

How much?  I have zero clue.  Even though I have a few quilts under my belt, I fit in sewing where I can. 

Some days I have ten minutes. 

Some days I ignore all the housework, laundry and dishes and manage to sew for ten hours.

One of my first Quilts was one I made for my Mom.  

She loved (loves?) it but it lives in Colorado up at the Cabin.

And with her progressing Alzheimer’s, we aren’t headed up there as much as we used to.

So I decided she needed a new quilt here.  

Something she can cuddle up with when her other favorite blanket is in the laundry.

Since I’m using this space to chronical the good bad and ugly of my sewing journey, I wanted to see

How long does it make to make a quilt – from start to finish.

For Science.

And here we are with a week 1 update.

Choosing the pattern

I struggle to follow directions.

shocking no one.

So lately, I have found it is more fun to embrace chaos and just wing it, with a vague idea and best guesses for sizes.

Another thing you should know about quilting – Math.  Lots and Lots of Math.

For this quilt, I’m blending basic heart blocks with hearts surrounded by stars.  

Add borders

Back with cuddle fabric and I think it will be perfect.

Picking the color palette

I have an obscene amount of fabric for someone who has only been sewing for a few years.

Like enough fabric that I could stop buying fabric all together and keep myself busy for DECADES.

Will that stop my from making additions to my collection?  Absolutely not.

I knew I wanted to include florals in the quilt.

But it couldn’t be all florals or it would be way too busy.

I also wanted a dark and moody background.

Not White. Not Cream. Not even gray.

But mixed in with all my lovelies, I found a lovely deep, dusky blue that I think will be perfect as my background.

Grabbing all of my florals and coordinating solids, and I think I have a plan. 

For now anyway

Enough variety to keep it scrappy, but enough balance to keep it sophisticated.

Making the Cut

Once you have your fabrics, then the cutting begins.

It’s funny how little time is spent on ACTUAL sewing, and how much time goes into prepping to sew.

And because I am not working from an actual pattern, hours were spent doing the math to reverse engineer by vision into combinations of squares and rectangles.

Week 1 Summary – 

I have all of my pieces cut

And it only took me 3.5 hours.

And  I think I even cut them all correctly.  But we’ll find out for sure when the piecing ( and probable swearing) starts.