February 18, 2011

The New Project - that I can't start yet

I've got a new project on my brain and I'm so excited to get to work on it! But I can't start yet. I don't have enough fabric.  Let me rephrase that. I don't have enough different fabrics.  And since I'm on a strict fabric budget, I can't just run out and get what I need. Here's why......


I saw this Fandango fabric by Kate Spain months ago online and fell in love with it. I've been wanting to make a new quilt for our bedroom that included the green of my walls (because I'm lazy and didn't want to repaint),  aqua, blue, lime green, and then a splash of red or orange.  Fandango has ALL these colors and it isn't too froo froo, so the Gardener Guy agreed on it.  I hopped online and bought myself a layer cake of  Fandango with a plan of making a queen sized quilt using the Disappearing Nine Patch pattern. I knew that I wanted to incorporate some other fabrics I'd already started accumulating for this quilt and I figured I was on my way to making my FIRST queen size quilt.  That is, until I realized I didn't have nearly enough 10" squares.  I should also explain here that I want each square to be different, I don't want any repeating fabrics. Crap. Now I have to sit down and figure out how many 10" squares I'm going to need for this pattern. That's going to involve some math. Double crap.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate math?  Just the mention of number crunching causes an instant glazing over of my eyes, and I start to pay attention to things in the room like how many holes are in the ceiling tiles. It probably makes you wonder why I love quilting so much.  I'm wondering the same thing. I mean seriously, not only is there some major math involved, but it's FRACTIONS, which is even worse. Ugh.

Well, I manned up and did a few equations, and got a impossible really big number. Like a 3 digit number. In order to make this quilt the size I want, I am going to need 108 squares. In case you didn't get that, let me repeat. I'M GOING TO NEED 108 TEN INCH SQUARES. Seems like way too many. Certainly that can't be right.  Well it is.
I did math 4 times just to make sure.

The layer cake came with 50 squares, and I went through my fabric stash multiple times to add to the end number, and so far I'm at 86.

Holy cow, this may take a while.