V's Version

Happy St, Paddy's Day! This Irish Quilter just put in another long day. Today was 13 hours or so and lately it's been under that but not by a lot. Yeeee-ikes. Dani is so, so supportive of my little hobby. The picture above is of the full sized quilt - roughly 3 x 4 feet. It is different from the most recent blog entry below.

It's going swimmingly so long as I don't think about how many hours are actually going into this particular quilt! Abandoning the first trial, doing a fabric mock-up and now creating the second and final complicated piece has put this bad baby well into the triple hourly digits.

Luckily, I love learning. I love the challenge of using what I have whenever I can, although this piece definitely needed many purchased fabrics in order to get the graduated colors. And (don't tell Dani lest she gloat) I am actually getting into having a somewhat organized system for my fabric and tools. The process of making this kind of art quilt is so chaotic that if I didn't have a system, it would take twice as long as I looked for scissors and pens among the scraps.

I wish I could instantly produce one of my You Tube time-lapse movies for you. Alas - sometimes making the little documentary takes as much time as the quilt! I do have this photo to show you though. I am proud of it. Working on this scale is not easy and it is coming along well. I am almost done with this phase of laying down the basic shapes and shadows. There is still tweaking to do. I know that it will look a lot more pulled together as I enter the second phase of actually quilting it with thread. All you see now is fabric. Did I mention that I am going to write private messages (from the couple's journals) into the shadows when I am done quilting it? Not that this quilt isn't already VERY customized - but that will set it over the top for romantic, I think.

OK - you may not hear from me for a while. I'm going to be wearing goggles and gallivanting in the windy city with members of my tribe.