When I grow up I’m going to be a quilt!

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When my kids were really little I got the opportunity to attend a quilting class at a neighborhood elementary school that had been re-purposed for adult education. I learned a lot in that class and met some very interesting people. One of the quilt styles that I fell in love with was entirely hand sewn. It is hugely labor intensive but the end product is astounding. It is called a Cathedral Window quilt. Our instructor was a master at it and taught us to do it by creating a small sample that one could make into a pincushion. I still have the square but I never made it into a pincushion.

So, I went home, figured out how much fabric I needed to make a quilt that would be a twin bedspread, and headed out fabric hunting. The basic background fabric is easy. It is simply unbleached muslin. The tiny windows can be done in a pattern or in random fabrics. I decided to use small calico prints for my windows and purchased an array of colors and prints.

Home I went to take on the daunting task of cutting out hundreds of 2 inch window squares and 7 inch muslin squares. Rotary cutters where not popular so I had to trace the cutting lines on to the cloth using a pencil and a cardboard template and then hand cut each piece. It wasn’t long before my husband was helping me, so we made relatively short work of the cutting process.

What you see in the picture below is the first of 10 panels that will make up this quilt. When I went back to work the process halted. The quilt and cut pieces have been in storage for years. I won’t say how many…. it’s too embarrassing! Let’s just say it is more than 10 and less than 40 years that it has been in storage.

Now that I am no longer working full time and my children are grown I’m going to get this thing done. It is going to grow up into a quilt this year… yes, that’s right… this year!

So, there you have it. My big project for this year. Keep your fingers crossed that I can post the finished project by December 31, 2016!