New project

A while ago I bought The Big Book of Civil War Quilts.

There are some beautiful quilts in it, and I have plans to definitely make 4 of them.

This one caught my eye, firstly for the blue and brown colours, second for the tiny pieces,; then when I read the directions I realised that I already had a box of 1.25"  and 2.5" strips ready and waiting.  It was so easy to grab those boxes and bring them down to Adelaide with me.

I arranged all the 1.25"strips in stacks of four, and then cut out my rectangles and squares.  It helped me to visualise what I had left to cut, rather than be overwhelmed by a whole box of strips. 

I spent two days sorting, cutting and arranging in whatever spare time I had, and finally managed to sew 9 blocks.

It took forever, arranging each block, then sewing each in turn.  I felt like I was getting nowhere; 520 blocks at this pace?  Really? 

So my next sewing session I concentrated on just pairing the rectangles with the large squares, then chain sewing them to two sides. 

In no time at all I had 20 sets of pieces sewn together.  It was so much quicker to just choose two fabrics to use together, rather than planning the whole block.

My next window of time I used to match a stack of small squares to each set; I pressed what I'd sewn, and added the small squares to the remaining rectangles.  Then just two more seams and I had a pile of blocks.

I know that it's probably the same time per block, but it was much more satisfying to see progress on a large number of blocks all at once.

Amazingly, I've cut up nearly all my 1.25" strips, so it's back to the charm square stash to cut more pieces.  I'm trying to tell myself to ignore the pinked edges and use the whole 5" square. 

I can cut one 2.5" square, four 1.25" rectangles and four 1.25" squares from each one.

1 charm square equals one block, which is pretty neat.  But I HATE the pinked edges, I hate having to guesstimate where to line fabric up, and what edge to use for the seam allowance.  And the pieces are just too tiny to lose that much in the seam allowances.  Sigh.  I just may have to cut the shapes accurately and deal with the waste, because then the sewing is a breeze and I get perfectly accurate blocks.  I think accuracy is going to win the day.