I make one large quilt a year, on average, and a dozen or so smaller ones. By smaller, I mean a size that's reasonable for me to quilt myself with
my standard-sized sewing machine on the definitely-not-huge-desk I have in my sewing room. So, um, less than 60" on a side is about my limit. I send out larger quilts to be quilted, which adds a hundred bucks or more to the cost, plus, well, I don't enjoy piecing big quilts. So I don't make many. Sometimes, though, I need to, for big events (like weddings) or whatever.
Anyway, here are all 49 blocks for this year's large quilt. It's from
Scrap Basket Surprises (actually a much larger variation of the throw-sized quilt on the cover) and it's all batiks, from three jelly rolls and some strips from my stash (in this case,
two different Bali-Pops and a
Tonga Treat). I still have to put on two borders, one of which is pieced like piano keys, and the quilt will finish at approximately 96" square. That's pretty darn big. :)
I started this quilt the last weekend in February, at our guild's quit retreat, and finished sewing the blocks last week. The blocks above aren't sewn together, they're all separate squares, just set up on a friend's design wall so I could get a look at them, since I really don't have a good place to view an eight foot square quilt on any floor in my house.
It's my token bed-sized quilt of the year, but it's not the only biggish quilt in my queue. I'm also going to finish a pink and green quilt that I started a couple of years ago, and it's looking super cute! (also laid out on my friend's design wall).
It's a variation of the
Winner's Bouquet pattern from Atkinson Designs (I strip pieced the melons instead of having them be one piece of fabric, and it's totally scrappy, even the white-on-white backgrounds). I will possibly quilt it myself, I haven't decided yet. At 48x64", the size is already a bit big, especially if I add borders, which is likely, but I'm thinking it needs a fancier quilting pattern than I can do. So I guess it's probably headed out the door to the quilter's. ;)
I have other sewing projects I need to finish sometime this year, but these two are the biggies. :)
