Quiltopia!Design 2010 Closure Quilt

Here are the first blocks of my Quiltopia!Design 2010 Closure Quilt, stacked up like fabric pancakes! Each finished block measures 4 3/4 inches.

I made them out of this:

This is the mass of tangled fabric strips I cut off from the beginnings of bolts in my shop. Every fabric bolt that started with a ragged or uneven edge had a strip taken off to even it up, and the strips were collected over the cupboard door handle. There was quite a pile by the end of 2010!

This is the sewing machine I stitched the blocks on:

This is also the sewing machine I learnt to sew on in 1970's. It was second hand then and belonged to Mum. She recently downsized and I kept her sewing machine, not used now for many years. I had it serviced and it sews like a dream. This particular Singer model was apparently Australian made. It was/is a lot of fun to sew on!
You can see the blocks taking shape. I decided on a liberated Log Cabin style I constructed them in a liberated manner on a calico/muslin foundation so each block could later be cut down to a uniform size. After making quite a few blocks, I wished I'd chosen a larger size!
I tried out some different layouts and I decided on the very traditional Straight Furrows design - it seemed to show up the subtle lights and shadows best. Sometimes it was quite difficult to find enough darker fabrics.
I began to notice that the blocks tended to use certain colours in their light half and I organised them so the colours flowed diagonally up the quilt in stripes of yellow, pink, blue and mauve.

Then I stacked them into piles of their rows and took them home to continue over my Christmas break. It has been a fun exercise.The challenge I set myself was to:

use only fabrics I'd had in my shop
make small improvised blocks
finish by the end of the year 2010

I succeeded in the first two, but the third? I'm still going...although I have finished the quilt top!

I will post some more photos of the quilt's progress next time. In the meantime, you can follow its progress on Quiltopia!Design Facebook page if you'd like.

xo xo Ann.