I’ve decided that I want to start a long-term craft project, something that I can dip in and out of and keep me occupied once Masterchef finishes (I have become worryingly addicted to it this year).  I’ve been interested in patchwork for a while and on Monday I went along to Granny Green’s and learnt how to do hand-stitched patchwork with hexagons, i’m just doing a simple star that I will sew onto a cushion at next Monday’s sewing machine workshop.

So, even though I’ve heard a few horror stories about people working on the same thing for nearly 10 years, I have decided to do a large patchwork quilt!  I’ve started a Pinterest board of images and fabric that will inspire my design.  Here are some of my favourites so far:

1. This is from a very old Plumo catalogue that I cut out to inspire ‘one day projects’

2. Amazing fabric from Prudent Baby

3. I really like hexagons in patchwork, like triangles they can be retro and kitsch all at once, this picture is from Design Sponge

4. Some more nice green fabric from Fabric Worm

5. I like the greens together in this tile work from Apartment Therapy

I’m going to do a rough theme of pinks and greens, with green (ish) squares making up the middle and pink (ish) hexagons making up the border.  I wanted to have a rough idea of how many squares, hexagons and triangles I would need so I did a mock-up in Photoshop which I won’t show cos it ain’t pretty!  But with rough estimates, I am going to need to do 225 squares, 400 hexagons and 125 triangles…

We may well have reached our next leap year by the time this quilt is finished, but I am determined that it is going to be an ongoing project that will one day have a place on our bed.  I have already ordered my first bundle of patches from Ebay and will forever more be on the look out for bits of fabric.