The Top is Done

I got the idea for this quilt from Camille Roskelley's book Simplify. I see elsewhere on the www, such quilts are called Plus Quilts.

The crosses started as 5 inch squares. I certainly didn't sew 3 x 5 inch squares together to get the longer pieces - I just cut a longer piece. I was pretty impressed with my maths skills being able to work that out!

I made a table in a word doc and coloured in the cells to work out the distribution of grey, green, red and white. Stuff happened along the way though, like deciding I quite liked the white in there and not having any more hummingbird fabric so I introdcued the white and black paisley that I orginally left out because I didn't like it - turns out I quite liked it in the quilt. And I ran out of grey and red because I decided to use the same red throughout. And speaking of the red, I thought it would be more magenta than the strawberry red it is. I think if I left the red out, it would all blend in a bit more. Not sure of I would like that or not. (The red I didn't use is going to be made into a a-line skirt).

Oh well, it all goes together in the end.

I plan to bind it in red. But before that I need to quilt it. Turns out Grandmother's Garden's wool batting is out of stock for at least two more weeks and I don't think anyone else in NZ stocks wool batting, so I might try a wool and cotton blend from The Crafty Needle 10 mins up the road. Maybe this week I will get it basted with a couple of hundred safety pins.

I might try a smaller version of this pattern next to make a baby's cot quilt.

Finally, all of the fabric came from Fabricworm. Most of it is from Patty Griffin's Flora and Fauna collection. The red is is an organic cotton made by Birch Fabrics - I am so NOT into organic (organic is over-rated and associated with hippies who don't immunise their kids in my mind), but I liked the colour and design. And the cutest grey (below) is by Megumi Sakakibara - it's a Jap import.

Queen's Birthday next weekend. Followed by two Teacher Only Days. It will be like a 5-day weekend.