Insanity Quilt

 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!