Et Voila!

Before you know it, all those strips are sewn together and you have a quilt top done. I bet you didn't think it would end up looking like this, from those simple beginnings...

I don't know the name of this quilt design -- perhaps the more experienced among you know the name -- but I've seen this motif used in a few quilts that I've come across, and once I saw it, I immediately intuited how easy it would be to make it, using strip piecing. The ones I saw have the motif made with much larger blocks, and just as a central design for the quilt, with borders surrounding it. I thought it would look cool if the whole quilt was done this way, with no borders. When it is eventually finished, the binding fabric will be the same red fabric, and wait until you see the back....

So there you are, a few days work, and there is one bright and busy quilt. I wish my photos were less blurry, so you could appreciate the busy-ness of the whole thing, with those fabrics so wild and colourful.

I love it.

Step Four

Then you sew all those strips together...

Step Three

Okay, so then you turn half of the squares a quarter turn and sew them together again...

Would you believe I'm past the heel on the second sock? There should be a couple of Finished Objects to show off, in the next day or two...

Step Two

Then you cut the sewn strips of three into squares, like so...

Oooh this is where it starts to get good...

Step One

So the first thing is to sew the strips in threes. I got a good start today (about a quarter of what I need to do) but have a long way to go before I get to Step Two. Unless I skip ahead, cuz it's my vacation and I can do whatever I want, so there. I'm pretty excited, since it looks just as eye-searingly bright as I hoped it would.

On the whole, I'm really having a great time so far, on my vacation -- I finished one library book last night (a pulpy mystery novel) and am about halfway through another (a pulpy fantasy novel.) I have even bought a few books by some of my favourite authors that I'm excited to read, too. I finished the first Stripey Sock, this morning, and have the toe completed on the second. Ah, it's nice to have all the time I want to Craft.

The Next Project

I'm past the heel on the first sock, but in more exciting news:


Here are 90 strips of fabric, ready to be reconstructed into something awesome! I'm not usually a huge fan of Kaffe Fassett fabrics (with apologies to Kaffe and his many fans) but for this project, I wanted something really dramatic, something that really caught the eye. Either of these fabrics would do that on their own, and as a combo, I think they really pop. Just wait until you see the design come together.