New Year's Day

With Adelaide's outside shade temperature nearing 42C, and something similar here, there was nothing for it but to stay in the airconditioning and start a new quilt. While James was having his swimming lesson a few weeks ago, I had inspiration for this quilt for a friend's new baby boy and sketched out the basic plan, with my thoughts of fabrics and quilting. Today I drew it out full-size on some large sheets of paper. It involves free-piecing lots of curves. Once drawn to my satisfaction, I numbered the pieces (there aren't that many - 18 pieces of background, and one applique piece) selected the fabrics for each piece, marked matching lines/points at strategic places on each seamline and cut the pattern up.

I added the (rather rough) 1/4in seam allowance as I cut. I tried various methods, including rotary-cutting straight around the pttern pieces, and marking with a white pen and then cutting with either sewing shears or the rotary cutter. They all worked ok, but none were perfect. I snipped tiny triangles at the matching points.

To join them, I pinned them at the matching points only, and guided the edges to meet by hand as I sewed. I had no clear indication of where the ends should meet, so started sewing at a pin in the middle somewhere and worked to one end, then restarted behind the oriningal point and worked out to the other end. I won't be able to tell just how evenly I cut and pieced until I press them in the morning, but they're coming together quite nicely from what I can see - and I'm confident I'll be able to 'quilt-out' any small areas of puffiness.