Twin quilt progress report: Planning and cutting

I finally started on the twin size quilt I’m making for Elise. I’m still very much a beginner, but I thought it might be fun to document the progress here, breaking it all down for anyone interested in the quilt-making process.

It took me a long time to figure out what sort of design I was doing, but I think I was mostly putting too much pressure on myself to make the perfect choice. Once I let go of that, things got rolling. I decided on a stripey design of alternating patchwork and solid rows. I’d show you my sketch, but it’s literally a drawing of horizontal stripes.

I cut 120 six-inch squares for my patchwork rows, many from the fabrics I showed you before, but I also added a few more prints from a recent trip to a cute new local fabric shop (Fabric Nosherie in Webster Groves) and my fabric stash to round out the color palette. I got all of the pieces cut for the top (including some solid strips not shown here) in about 3-4 hours.

And then it took about an hour to lay all the patterns out in a way I liked. There will be solid strips between the patched rows, but I plotted everything out without them. And that was when I realized the quilt is going to be freaking huge. I mean, I know it’s a twin size and I know the final dimensions, but seeing what I had laid out on the floor and knowing it was only going to be bigger was kind of intimidating.

So that’s where I’m at now. Next step: assembling the quilt top.

I set myself an artificial deadline of April 26 (Elise’s birthday) for completing the whole thing, but I’m not sure how realistic that really is with everything else I have in the works. I might not make it! Stay tuned.

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Other posts in this series:
1. Planning and cutting
2. Assembling the quilt top
3. Assembling the quilt back
4. Quilting
5. Binding
6. Finished Quilt