Beginning Baby Harlequin

Recently, I "took the process pledge." You may have noticed that button on my right hand sidebar. Basically the process pledge is an encouragement to blog about the process of doing projects (sewing or otherwise) rather than just posting the finished product and a blurb about it. The idea behind it was that it sets unrealistic standards, pushes people to think they have to finish something before they blog about it, and can be discouraging. There is a wonderful post about it if you follow the link above.

Anyway, I think I have been posting my process most of the time anyway. I completely agree with the thought behind it though, so I took the pledge. I also will say that I find blogging very motivating. I do feel pushed to accomplish more, and in my case I think that's a good thing. I've gotten way more projects completed than I ever used to, but I can see where that would be discouraging to some.

Here's what I've been working on this week...

My first subscribed issue of McCalls Quick Quilts came in the mail early this week. I had picked up one of these in a store and loved several of the patterns. I don't have any other subscriptions because I hate to waste paper, so I usually just buy an issue if I want to read it, or more likely, just read it at the library (that works well for magazines they get). I told myself that if I subscribed I would try at least one pattern from each issue. If I wasn't able to do that, I would not renew my subscription at the end of a year.

So when I went through the book, I loved this pattern. It looked simple enough that I thought I could do it. One of the points either in the process pledge article or the article she linked to made the point that people are switching to easy patterns in order to have a finished product to blog about. There seems to be a "lost art" to doing the more difficult patterns. I totally agree. However, I am fairly new to quilting, and self taught, so I give myself a little leeway here :)

I loved this pattern, but I knew right away that I didn't want to use so many fabrics. I thought I would prefer two or maybe three fabrics. So I numbered the rows so I could easily calculate how many diamonds to cut in each color.

Then I picked out two of my stash fabrics and got to work cutting while all my daycare kids napped, and my six year old worked on his math. These are flannel fabrics, which I think is perfect for a snuggly baby quilt. I was able to cut all my diamonds for the quilt except for the border pieces in about an hour - probably less, but this also included the time it took to go through the stash and decide which colors to use.

This is kind of what it will look like. I only laid out a few pieces to see what it was going to look like. The finished quilt will be 9 dark diamonds wide and 13 rows tall, not including the border. I'm going to do the border in the solid turquoise color.