My New Project

As I have mentioned, like a broken record, my best friend is off to uni soon. I wanted to give her something personal and lovely as a present to take with her and make her room homely. Thus, I decided to embark on a new project and make her my first ever patchwork quilt. I ordered the squares a couple of weeks ago now on eBay, and they actually came from South Korea. I decided that I would buy ready cut squares, simply because I found a selection available on there (I wasn't expecting to), plus they were pretty reasonably priced, especially for fabric nowadays. Anyway, the squares arrived today :D I have been waiting for this day for too long.

These are them layed out, sorry about the busy background of the lace tablecloth.

There are 150 squares of 10cm square each, in a wide range of fabrics (the most we have of any one patch is 2). My mum offered to help me sort the squares out tonight after work, so I went around at 11 and we spent the next 2 hours organising the squares into design and drawing squares on the back of each one, which will be the lines I sew along. The square we have ended up with, after allowing the border to stitch together, is 8cm squared. I did this by measuring 1cm in from one edge, drawing a line, and then measuring out 8cm from this and drawing the next line. I then did this with the other two edges too. This ensured that the squares were the correct shape, even if the squares arrived with us cut at slightly wonky angles.

Here is a square that is drawn on:

The project obviously has a fair way to go yet, but all the prep work is out of the way, yay! I am planning to make rows of them to start with, then stitch the rows together, then sew them onto a backing sheet.

On the back will be a border of patches, that is 2 patches wide, and which has some patches that are embroidered with messages from close friends and family. I thought that was a nice touch to help her take a bit of home with her.

So there we go, watch out for more on the project as I go along. I am sure it won't take long at all once I get properly started. I can't wait!