Monsterproject

No, this is not another Halloween-post, the title comes from German colloquial speech where you can refer to something very big as "Monster-whatever it is you're referring to". (Also "mammoth-...", but that's beside the point.)
The other reason I chose this title (besides teaching my non-German readers about the intricacies of German language) is because it always reminds me of this song, which in turn always cracks me up:

(If you don't speak German but feel that understanding the lyrics would make this song even more awesome, message me and I'll translate it for you ;) )

My very own monsterproject is also my very first quilt. Okay, scratch that, i did make a small patchwork quilt that now hangs on the wall above my bed, but that doesn't really count; also I didn't have any batting for that (and didn't want to buy any) so I cut apart a very cheap and very synthetic Ikea blanket. Well, it looks nice enough for decorative purposes, which is all I ever wanted.

I chose to make a quilt because

• I find them fascinating
• I wanted a project for winter that would keep me warm while I worked on it
• and you can never have enough blankets.

I wanted to make this one bigger than the first small one, so I decided to make it blanket-sized: 1,5m*2m. At first, I didn't want any patchwork at all as this seemed so chliché (and I was afraid I'd mess up all the tiny joins etc), with all visual interest coming from contrasting quilting stitches. But trying to find a pattern that would cover the entire area, not be too complicated to stitch and still be pretty, I googled "geometrical patterns" and came across this:

(source)

I especially like the one in the middle of the upper row with the circles, although i think the one in the top-left corner would also make a beautiful quilt for a more skilled seamstress (btw: is there a masculine version for that word?)
Because that would have been a little too much patchwork for my liking, I drew a simpler version: (and coloured it with pen. Sorry. All my coloured pencils were in my apartment.)

Thosse numbers were for figuring out how to combine the
different colours without any overlap

I decided on a colour-scheme (blue, because most of my bedclothes are blue which in turn is because appearantly I just like that colour in my room ;) ) and calculated and drew how much fabric I needed in each colour.

In case you were wondering why i wrote "drew"

 Since I wanted my quilt to be usable for a variety of things ranging from "picnic-blanket" to "extra  warmth in bed in winter" I wanted it to be washable and without any synthetics. I went to the gigantic fabric store in my town and got the batting, but they didn't have all that I wanted (colour you want - quality you want - quantity you want - choose two) despite being so gigantic. I guess my wishes were just too uncommon. (Come on, people: simple, unicoloured cotton in lengths longer than one meter? Who would ever buy such a thing? -.-) So in order to get the whole bunch of fabrics from one place to ensure their weight and drape and quality and what have you went well together, I ordered what I needed online. Aaaand forgot the backing, who would have thought. Luckily, my mother offered that I could use one of our (or my late grandmother's?) old tablecloths, since we never use them anyway. I found one that should fit both the colour-scheme and size, but have no idea what kind of a fabric it is. It is heavier and sturdier than the cotton, but, being a table cloth, should be washable. Also it would make the entire quilt/blanket more robust, so forgetting to order two metres of fabric might even turn out to be a blessing in disguise! (It's certainly the more environmental- and wallet-friendly version, recycling old table-cloths!)

I did (after washing and drying and letting it sit in my room for a week) manage to cut the pieces, here's what the actual thing will look like (kinda):

(without the border, or appliques, or topstitching...)

Now I'll have to sew them together, but i kinda dread the complicated looking cross section in the middle... ah well, it will be covered with the green square in any case, so If I mess it up, nobody'll know! :) Until I have the top part fully assembled, this will be a weekend-project for when I have a sewing machine. For the weekdays, I have two projects that I will talk about (and show pictures of) in another post:

• Buttoned legwarmers (I adore legwarmers, but curse everytime I have to pull them on over shoes and jeans and whatnot)
• A regency shift (I really don't want to sew underarm gussets with a sewing machine, so that will be a nice litte handsewing project.)

Until then :)