A Quilt in Progress

PART I

Full of renewed energy after Christmas, I decided to start work on a new small quilt, using the Confetti style of Woodland Stroll.  I wanted it to be a quilt that would be in harmony with that one.  

To add a bit more interest, I decided to Blog the quilt as I made it.  This will hopefully only be about three blogs, but if life intervenes (which given that today is New Years Eve, it may well do), the quilt may take a bit longer than anticipated!

Here is the photo I am working from.  I am not seeking to copy this photo exactly, it is just for inspiration.

This is a bit of a mad idea, as I STILL haven't set up my work studio properly after the move.  I know I should do so, before getting sucked into a project, where I will spend all my time looking for tools, fabric etc. but as they say 'I'd rather be quilting'.  So, this is the sort of mess I usually have on my work tables as I work.  Messy huh?

These are some scraps left over from the last project, along with a few small bits of fabric that I hadn't got around to putting away.  I also had to haul the big box out of the store room (some of my stuff is in there) to find fabric I was happy to shred to bits!  All the 'good' stuff is usually kept in my fabric drawers.

Let me tell you, this is HOURS of work!  Having selected my colour palate and a few'dodgy' choices, I had to shred the fabric into confetti with the rotary cutter.  It really is quite hard work chopping all this fabric up, even with a new blade in the rotary cutter.  To ease the time I listened to an audio book called Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber.  As I worked away I thought about my twenty wishes.  An electric confetti making device was definitely on the list.  Maybe I could invent it!

It was difficult to work out how much confetti I needed, so I just shred away until I got fed up of looking at that particular fabric!  It is amazing how much fabric this method uses.

Then I set to work on the actual quilt.  I lined up where some of the elements were to be placed.  The path and roofs of the buildings are solid blocks.  Then the roofs were removed and cut at an angle to look more realistic.

I started placing clumps of confetti straight on to the batting.  I should have explained that I am using black batting, as I felt that would serve the same purpose as throwing the black confetti onto the quilt, it would add depth.  Notice I have thrown out the smaller roof, which I decided was overkill.  This layer of the quilt is the background layer.

I also changed the colour of the large rock towards the centre of the picture, which is now a dark grey instead of grey/white.  Once satisfied with placement, I layered a thin strip of black netting along the 'floor' of the scene to create a shadow layer, and then covered the whole of the confetti area with netting and pinned it using a gizzillion pins.  Something looked off, but I didn't know what, so I went and did some emails.

Er, I guess I forgot to put the tree trunks on!  I had to unpin and gently remove the two layers of netting and cut and place the tree trunks.  Then the whole thing was repined.  My fingers were sore little bunnies at this point!

This was where I was at at about 10.30pm last night, which was way too late to sew this layer in place.  I'm off out now, but I hope to get back to work on it this afternoon, prior to the New Years Eve festivities.

Keep watching!