Bank Holiday

This bank holiday I thought I'd save some money by staying indoors finishing things off. Now I am on the making strips part of the quilt which is a lot of fun. I am still amazed that I can look at a collection of fabrics thinking they go together, only to sew them together and realise they don't half as much as I thought they did. This quilt is all about bold bright clashing colours so it's even more difficult, but it's good fun just taking risks and living with the results. I tend to always put the colours I feel safe with together so I look at this as breaking out of the box a bit.



The whole 60° thing is a complete mystery to me so as a result I am relying quite heavily on the template rather than measuring with my ruler. I have been reliably informed by my mother that templates are OUT and rulers are IN, but I just don't have her expertise. There's something quite reassuring and foolproof with a template so I thought I'd just run with it and see what happens. The only good thing about 60° cutting is the stretch you get with the fabric which allows you do a lot of 'tugging' when you're sewing the blocks together to get them to line up. I'm sure it's all going to go drastically wrong at some point but until then I am happily cutting up strips and making blocks.



Here's how it is shaping up. I am not quite following the pattern instructions as I am using a lot of small scraps which have been in my stash for years. Two bits of material were childhood clothes! My mum once made a quilt out of her beautiful 60's dresses which she had lovingly saved. She probably could have sold them for a lot of money as they were beautiful, but she loved them so much, she wanted something forever to remind her of those great days. I thought that was a really nice idea so I have incorporated strips from clothes than just remind me of being young. I had saved them for such a long time, it seemed fitting to finally be able to use them for something. It means there are a lot of random seams in the middle of strips but I quite like the effect. It's a bit like Kim's washed and worn jelly rolls where you'll suddenly get a strip with a pocket on it!

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