planning a quilt with James

This week, I have barely seen my children because my work has completely taken over. I am not complaining, it has been a rewarding work week despite the unusually long hours well above my usual workload. We are just about to finish an intensive once a year face to face teaching week with our students (the rest of the course is online). It is a most interesting week and our speakers come from all over the world. One speaker is a surgeon in a remote clinic in the Thai rainforest. He is pure amazing. I am glad that Richard was able to be at home for the James and Alistair. I am a bit miffed to hear that he provides far more exiting after school snacks than I do! He also managed to get James to take notes for his weekly Victorian research task without causing a major meltdown. Back to oatcakes and apples next week, with a touch of tantrum thrown in for good measure.

Despite the long working hours, I managed to squeeze in a few minutes of creativity every day. It keeps me happy and quite possibly sane although my family may tell you otherwise. I paid teenagers to walk younger siblings to and from activities and clubs so I could take my bra off, put my pj's on and knit or sew. I'll show you my first 2018 wardrobe essential shortly but today I want to talk about my next quilt project.

Now that I finished my own quilt, I am keen to get started with James' quilt. The internet is an incredible resource for anyone seeking inspiration. I spent many happy snippets of time looking at the most beautiful quilts all round the world wide web. James gets easily overwhelmed when faced with too much choice (who doesn't?) and I narrowed the options down to three designs that I know I will enjoy making and that I thought he might like. All three include design elements I have not used before, which is important for me. James wants a colourful log cabin quilt just like this. I am pleased because I wanted to make a log cabin quilt for ages.

We then spent a good hour choosing fabrics from my fat quarter and small pieces of remnants boxes. I was surprised by his choices, he chose quite a lot of florals. I would have chosen very differently for him. I am glad I asked him to choose! I suggested he choose maybe 20 designs but he was so exited, he found it difficult to limit himself to this number and chose a total of 51 different fabrics. I am secretly quite pleased of course, the more the merrier. I don't want impose my own preference for the colourful riotous quilt on anyone but I am glad someone in the house shares my love for strong colours and eclectic mixes of designs. Both Sam and Annie have a big need for things to match - for their own quilts, they both chose an entire fabric range with well coordinated fabrics. I didn't even suggest to go through my stash boxes to them because I knew they would not particularly enjoy it. I might have gotten away with it with Sam but I have a vast number of floral and otherwise girly fabrics, which put him off. I'll be curious to find our where Alistair fits in when it is his turn to have a quilt made for him.

What do you think of James' choice? I think I might have the sneak in a few more solids to give the quilt a bit of balance. Do you agree? What would you do? Some of the pieces are very small (strategically folded to the size of a folded fat quarter) and wont't go far and I might have to choose a few additional fabrics that can substitute when one of James' favourites is all used up. It will be fun project and I am really looking forward to getting started!

Have a good weekend when it comes. xx