I have been working obsessively for the last few weeks on an Insanity Quilt. I discovered this quilt while surfing the internet for EPP quilts, and was instantly enamored with the quilt. I was some what intimidated by the quilt being made up of 10,530 half inch hexies, but I do love to EPP hexagons and I have done 1/2" - so I thought "Why Not?". Here is a picture of Rhonda Pearce's (the designer) quilt that I pulled off the internet. Hopefully no one is going to come after me for breaking copyright laws.
The pattern for this quilt was published in the Australian Patchwork magazine, but I am not sure what issue. I did order a pattern from the Post Office Patchwork shop in Australia.
My first step was to start printing and cutting out 1/2" hexagon templates. I drew them in Illustrator and printed out 69 on a cardstock paper. [69 because I also have a 1" test block on the page]. I printed out 20 pages and my dear husband cut out 10 pages worth and I did the other 10 pages. That gives me 1,380 templates and since the pattern calls for 600 I think I have enough.
After that I purchased some fabric for the two inner borders. The rest of the fabric is coming from my stash. I am using white on white or off white fabrics for the white background hexagons - need 5,389.
I cut out a bunch and thought I was set - but when I counted them, I had just cut out 1,350 - 1 5/8" squares to make the hexies. Oh my gosh - I guess they will get me started, but guess I have a lot more to cut out. I also cut out some border squares and to date I have enough print fabric to make around 100 of the diamonds. I have started covering Hexies and assembling the corner of the quilt.
I designed a progress chart in EXCEL to track my progress. I know it will take me several years to complete this quilt and wanted to track how long it was taking me. Here is a pic of my progress chart and summary
One last picture. I made a chart for my fabric choices. I picked 80 different fabrics from 10 color hues of fabrics. I cut 2 diamonds and one flower from each fabric which will give me 160 diamonds and 80 flowers. That should be enough for me to ensure random color in my quilt. I still have brown, green, pink and grey to cut - but I am getting there.
My friends always tease me about my organization when I start a quilt, but it works for me. My sewing needs are all in a special travel case and I have the hexies, fabrics cut outs and threads so that it is a grab and go whenever I want to work on the quilt.
Woohoo....the journey begins!
While your friends may tease you about your quiltmaking organization, they're all probably secretly envious that you take time to do it! I certainly don't do such a thing with any of my projects, but I really admire that you do. The best I can say about what I make is that I track the quantity of fabrics used in a project. I NEED to see that I'm using-up more fabric than I'm taking in, with my goal of using all my stashed prints by 2032, when I'll be 80 years old. I figure that by then, I'll have arthritis or poor vision or a lack of interest in quiltmaking. We all set goals, don't we? I admire you for tackling such a big project, but I can already see your dedication to it. It's gonna be gorgeous!
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