October NewFO - A Puzzleer

Wow, it's the end of October already.  Just two more months left in 2013.  I've already started my Christmas shopping, so I've got a leg up there.  Still have lots of reports due at work, but progress is being made.  

On the quilting front, it's been a pretty good year so far.  I've used more fabric than ever before.  Five quilts were completed and I'm likely to get at least one more completed before the end of the year.  My UFO pile has only grown by 6 quilts, so I'm up to a total of 10 UFOs, but more than half of those were projects started in 2012.  The increase in UFOs wasn't really deliberate, but I realized last year that I don't finish quilts if I don't start them.  That sounds like a "duh" statement.  Let me explain.  Once my UFO total was down to 3 in 2011, I'd only start one project and work on that one start to finish thinking that was the way to finish a lot of quilts.  But in 2012, I finished just 3 quilts.  Down from finishing 7 quilts in each of the previous 2 years when finishing UFOs took priority. What happened?  There was no pipeline of projects.  I've found over the last year that it's actually more efficient if I work on more than one quilt at a time.  Cat Patches' 2012 NewFO challenge was what helped me realize that.  So this year I made it a priority to participate in Barbara's 2013 NewFO challenge.

So for, I'm 10 for 10.  That's one new project for each month in 2013.  (It has absolutely nothing to do with the needle nannies, she's giving away each month).  So what's the new project this month? It's another one off my PIGS list.  Drama Teen had picked out a quilt pattern almost 2 years ago that she wanted for her room.  She wanted it made with batiks and she wanted it to look like a "rainbow".  Over the last two years, she's been picking out batiks for this quilt.  I finally got around to scanning in all the fabrics she's acquired and working up a preliminary lay out in EQ. 

Pattern is Jigsaw by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Once she blessed this lay out, I starting laying out the fabrics to make sure they worked and played well with each other in real life. From some reason my scanner doesn't work well with purples, I usually have to edit the scans in Photoshop to get the color even close.  Since the each block incorporates pieces of the fabrics from adjacent blocks, you need to be sure of your lay out before you start sewing.  The first pass at a lay out looked much like the EQ mock up. 

The lower left hand corner needed some tweaking because the blues didn't flow right.  Then we decided that the lower right corner needed to be tweaked as well.  That dark burgundy in the corner didn't look right.  Plus DT wasn't trilled with a couple of the red violet fabrics in this layout.  So after a week of playing around with the layout on my cutting table.  This is the final color map for the quilt. 

Not much different than the first map, but the bottom edge fades better and the DT likes the red violet fabrics better in this version. So with this as my map, I've started cutting and piecing the blocks.  Only three done so far.   

Pattern is Jigsaw by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

You have to keep up with all the little "puzzle piece tabs".  Which ones go in which blocks.  I've developed a system of sticky notes and sandwich bags to keep all the block parts together with labels on where the block goes in the layout.  These blocks go together quickly.  It will be fun to see the puzzle pieces fit together as this one progresses.  

That's my NewFO for October.  Check out all the other new stuff going on over at Cat Patches.