I spotted the picture below and knew this was going to be the variation I would make. It reminded me of Moroccan and Tunisian tiled floors. When I was 2 or 3 weeks engaged, I went to Gibraltar with my friend and fiancé and we took a day trip to Morocco......and we ended up in Tunisia on our honeymoon so you can imagine that I have lots of good memories from both places and wanted to recreate a little of that.......
Anyone who has happened upon my blog before knows that I'm a bit of a divil for the foundation paper piecing method and since this was going to be my first repetitious pattern in quite a while, I decided to go with this method again as it takes the guess work and the accuracy out of it. I hate ripping anything back and when there are multiple seams...... this way is just easier.
My sewing room floor. My poor sewing room floor. I meant to take a picture but I'd like you all to think that I'm a pillar of organisation and work only at a station of complete tidyness and order.....but those of you who have worked at paper piecing, you know what I mean by my poor sewing room floor! ;) I took a little break in between blocks and made my little fabric covered box and it proved very handy for holding my little stack until I was ready to add them all together.
I stuck with the blue and white colour scheme from the picture I originally fell for. I thought it was perfect and why mess with perfection. I did however choose a navy "shadow" from Stof instead of a solid colour. It gives a little more texture and dimension, I think. I did hours and hours and hours of chain piecing and slowly my blocks built up. Each block is easy but the process is very time consuming and a tad monotonous! Let's just say, I can't wait for my new sewing machine which will have a built-in thread cutter so save me trimming hundreds of threads! That alone sucked hours of my time! Worth it though...
I moved my sewing machine from my sewing room, to the kitchen table, to the coffee table in front of the tv and back to my sewing room again..........just to change things up a bit. In truth, I dislike repetitive patterns, I get bored easily. I think that's why I like foundation paper piecing, you get to change things up completely and make very, very accurate tiny pieces with minimal points to match up!
I had intended to make a king size quilt for our bed....... everytime I look at it, I'm reminded of those first months and years together with my husband because of the memories it evokes but it wasn't to be! My husband suffered from a case of labrynthitis not long after our twins were born in 2011. It was caused by a simple ear infection but the ear infection was caused by those first few weeks of pure exhaustion brought on by 2 newborns in the house. At the time, it was a terrible bout, he was off work for a good length (no joke for a self-employed person), he was so dizzy that he couldn't hold his babies and couldn't stand straight without the room spinning. He still suffers when he's run down or overly stressed out and the dizzyness takes over........ well, I don't know what it says for my poor quilt because everytime he looks at it, he grabs the counter and turns away while muttering something about it being "lovely, dear". I have joked about getting my own room if I do make a kingsize because I don't think he could actually get under this quilt but I'm not ready for seperate beds just yet!
So that's how my king-size plan converted to an over-sized lap-quilt. It's probably more of a single quilt size but since I don't have any single beds at my house, this is going to be a throw quilt for the couch for our new conservatory when it's finished!
Can I just mention that while I do love paper-piecing, I am SICK of pulling those papers out. Thank heavens I chose to use Carol Doaks actual paper-piecing paper as opposed to using standard printer paper as I used to. This falls out in comparison but still it's a tedious job. To those who always said it was therapeutic, I'm calling you in future to avail of free therapy at my house when I'm finished a paper-piecing project! You have been warned!
I had planned on three borders, skinny blue, medium white and then a large outside blue border but I've decided I hate adding borders - not the look, I just ALWAYS seem to measure wrong and end up 3/8 inch short!! Grrr, so right now, I've stopped at a skinny blue border........ I'll give it a rest and see if I can get the motivation to do the rest!
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