My Wool Journey

My wool has arrived! Love the colors and quality of this 100% merino wool from Felt on the Fly . I'm a happy camper! Spent the evening coming up with my plan for color combinations for small houses 1 and 2 as well as their neighboring small houses 3 and 4. Those won't be done until March, but I want to coordinate the neighborhood.    Next up is ironing the patterns, which are on freezer paper, onto the wool. Then, cutting them out...   And building the houses. Can't wait to start stitching, but first I need to purchase coordinating thread. Road trip!

The first block was released on January 1st. That makes sense! This is made up of small house 1 and 2, eight of each, to make up half of the center circle. I've decided not to use the pattern at 100%, as this would be 69" square and I honestly do not have a place to display something that size. Not to mention creating a quilt, mostly of wool, in the size would be expensive! So I'm thinking about cutting this down to 65%, or ~45" square. Since the pattern is intended for piecing on a sewing machine, something I haven't used in 30+ years, I'll need to create my own pattern, not including 1/4 inch seam allowances. I can do that, right?!? Thankfully, I have experience and access to Adobe Creative Suite, so will most likely draw this using InDesign or Illustrator.  My first attempt resulted in 18 houses rather than 16 houses to complete a half circle. Back to the drawing board! After some careful measuring in millimeters, I was able to create patterns for the small...

Sometime shortly before the end of 2020, I became aware of a Block of the Month (BOM) that was designed by Wendi Williams , an Australian designer whom I love. Her design, Color My World, was designed exclusively for The Quilt Show.com (TQS) as their 2021 BOM. Having never created a quilt in my life, and just starting to take up wool applique since I retired in February 2020, I decided on New Year's Day 2021 to jump in with both feet and join TQS online with the plan to create this with wool applique on linen rather as designed using cotton. Over the past year I've learned that Wendi uses wool felt on many of her quilts, so it just seemed appropriate to do the same. My hope is to log my journey as I attempt to create this magnificent project over the coming year.  Hope you follow along!