501 - the making of a quilt

Since several projects will be on blackout from pics for quite a while I decided to talk about making a quilt using the newest project.

First you find a pattern you like. I found one called 501. Sometimes you're lucky to find a kit for half price that has colors you are happy with.

Next you pick out a good audiobook to listen to - its going to be a long haul on this one - lots of little squares.

Then you cut lots of strips. 8 sets of blue colors (6 strips each) - 6 sets of yellow colors (8 strips each).

Sew them together. Press all the groups. To make sure I got all the colors mixed up well I took each yellow color and sewed one of each of the blues to it. So- 48 sets of strip groups.

Next, you get to turn around and cut the long strips into smaller strips. 10 small strips from each strip group. That's 10 times 48 or 480 smaller strips. (960 little squares). Back to the sewing machine.

Those are sewn together into groups of 4. Back to the iron to press all the squares open and nice and flat.

So - right now I'm in the middle of sewing & cutting billions and billions of strips into smaller strips and those into groups of four. All these little groups of 4 need to be kept separate so I can randomly sew them together but not have the same set too close together. Once those are done I'll be sewing 2 groups of 4s together and those will be added to longer light blue rectangles and some day, all will be put together to make a very pretty summer quilt for the guest room.

Oh - the audiobook? One of the Elm Creek Quilters books by Jennifer Chiaverini. Feels like my own little quilt circle with this book playing in the background.