The Quilt That Took Over the World

OK, so I'm making a quilt for Mark for Christmas. I've been slaving away at this thing constantly, day and night, for weeks. (I haven't really, but it sounds like a good reason why I haven't been blogging and who out there knows differently, so there.) (and yeah, Brenda, I know you know differently, but shhhhh) I've never made a quilt before (in fact, "complete quilt" is on my list of 101, so whoohoo), and I designed this little puppy all by myself. It's a basic nine-patch, which I've put together using strip-sewing, and it's overall going really smoothly.

Until.

I finally got all the blocks made (had to reorder one fabric that I ran out of, but that came this week, so I was back in action), had three of the rows of blocks (which are each a nine-patch) sewed together, then ripped all apart because I had laid out the wrong pattern (grrrrrr), and then sewed back together. So I started laying it out on my living room floor to see what the finished product would look like, and also to get all the blocks in the right order and rotated correctly (because I am rotating the center square of each block a quarter-turn each time, but anyway). So the whole thing was laid out, all 35 blocks of it, and that is when I realized:

The thing was freaking HUMONGOUS.

I mean, it was monstrous. I had 35 18-inch squares laid out in a 5x7 pattern, and that made the finished front, before borders, 90 inches by 126 inches. It was OVER TEN FEET LONG. BIGGER than a KING-SIZE. Um.

Did I mention that Mark has a twin bed?

I wanted it to be a bit bigger than twin, like a double-size, so the quilt would hit the floor on both sides like a bedspread rather than a comforter. And then when he moved up to a larger size bed, he could still use the quilt. Still, even taking all that into consideration, I rather overestimated.

I've ended up taking two ROWS of blocks (10 blocks total) out of this quilt and it is STILL slightly larger than a double. Before borders. But it still looks pretty kick-ass, and hey, less for me to sew, right, so I might actually get the quilt top finished today if I get my butt off the computer and back to the sewing machine. I just got a chuckle over this gigantor quilt & figured I could babble to my blog about it. check ya later. mk