Slowly slowly

Caribbean Blue is coming along, but slower than I had anticipated. This last week has been full of busy evenings out and about and with chores around the house. There is also a horse show this weekend, so I probably won't make too much progress.

I had a marathon cutting session to cut all the fabric and a good long sew after to make patchwork strips. The pattern has you make tubes by piecing long strips together lengthwise, then cut across those tubes to achieve strips of the various fabrics without needing to cut out individual pieces and sew the patchwork together piece by piece. Clever!

After I finished those, I tried out layouts on the living room floor. It's the only area big enough to accommodate a quilt this size besides the bed! I used post it notes on each strip to mark the order so I didn't have to worry about keeping track when I rolled up and went back to the card table.

I've got the bulk of it all sewn together, just the corners left. The whole top will require trimming to attain an actual rectangle - for now it is a rough placement of strips on the diagonal. I have to go back to the floor so I can figure out what pieces I need to fill in to have the size quilt I want in the end. Hopefully I won't need to cut more fabric, I would like to have some of this lovely voile leftover. But I'm really just eyeballing it at this point. See those plant leaves on the floor? Those are my "size markers" I put down to mark the corners of the finished quilt. Very high tech.

I'm not sure yet what the back or binding is going to be, but I'm getting close to needing to decide! The pattern calls for one big piece of voile in a solid turquoise for the back, but I wonder what a quilt totally made of voile will be like?? On the other hand I'm skeptical of using any of my cottons because I'm afraid the voile will lose its liquidy drape. A problem for another day!