Oh boy, I have so many in progress projects! I can't wait until they start getting completed and I have some cool stuff to show. In the mean time, my Husband and I visited Lake Michigan over Memorial Day. I have this woven mexican blanket I've had since I was 17 that I keep in the trunk. We had a nice picnic next to the lake using it, but it just wasn't big enough. Since my Husband has been curious about quilt construction and I haven't been able to get motivated on sewing, we decided to make a new picnic blanket.
We are using Oh Fransson's Mixed Tape quilt pattern to do it. (She has a wonderful blog that I frequently read.) Since I love to over-engineer things (must come from being a computer programmer), I picked out some nice home dec fabric for the back side of the quilt. I'm thinking this will wear well as the side that is always against the ground. Since my Husband is helping, and I'm not in the mood to work on anything complicated, I decided I could easily part with Moda's Simplicity line that I have in my stash. More specifically, I won't cry if it gets ruined. It would be another story if we were cutting up my Swell or any of my Japanese imports!
So far it has been a lot of fun. I think it will be really neat to have a project that my Husband and I both contributed to. He'll do as much as he's comfortable with and so far he's sewn some of the half and half blocks as well as done some of the roller cutting. We've had to rip and redo some of his blocks which I can tell really frustrates him, but I think in the end, when we picnic on the beach, it'll be just a little more special because he had a part in the project.
Update: I'm not sure how long he'll hang in there with me for -- we have all the blocks sewn and it's a nightmare trying to organize them so there aren't two similar ones next to eachother. We deviated from the mixed tape pattern and made the block styles we had enough fabric for. He's declared he's writing a computer program to figure it out for us. In the mean time, he naps on the floor while I shuffle blocks around =)
Resources:
Buy the Mixed Tape Quilt Pattern on Oh Fransson's Etsy Site.
