Hand-piecing a king size quilt from shirts. Part Two.

I pulled the basket of triangles and began counting. It didn't take that long really - and yes, I was running out of everything - especially white.  I made a little chart and some notes, measured my bed, and went hmmd and hawed about what size to make it.  Should I just call it? Is it a much smaller quilt than my original vision?  I ultimately decided that I would aim for a generous coverlet size with not a lot of overhang; that would fit squarely over the bed 10x10 blocks - 85"x85".  100 blocks.   If I choose to add borders later, I can, but for now, this feels manageable. 

I cut out more white, simple white cotton from my collection, and sat down and worked through the triangles I had left - committing to piecing together enough squares from the triangles to complete a block. 

I ran out of triangles on my 4th day.  I didn't know what to do!  My estimations for the quilt in 2015 told me I had enough blue to make a King size quilt but where was the rest of the fabric? 

It's a miracle.

I impulsively visited my parents in April this year. On my way to visit them, I stopped at our storage unit to look around, to see if anything was jumping out at me to come back with me.  

My vintage vinyl suitcase that contained my quilting cottons beckoned me to open it.  I had been thinking about this stash of fabrics from my life for a few months - but it wasn't top of mind when I entered the storage unit.   I unzipped it to see the contents and ta-da, there were several pieces of my lost shirt-fabrics I needed to complete the quilt.  It was meant to be. 

Upon my return, I set up a little area to work on cutting out triangles.  Day one. Unfold table.  Day two. Find roller-cutter and mat.  Day three. Set up iron and board.  Then it took me a week until I had time to systematically work.  It took me three more days to cut out the remaining triangles.  While I was working,  I wanted to take a break and come back to it another time - but I knew that this was it.  If this quilt was going to even have a chance to be completed, I knew I must finish cutting out all the pieces or it could be another 5-10 years.

Quilt Math.

From my notes and counting, I knew that of the 100 blocks needed, I had 38 blocks fully assembled.  In the bag, there were enough paired triangles or partial blocks to make 22 blocks.  Of unassembled triangles, there was enough to make maybe 10 blocks. Therefore, I needed to cut enough triangles to complete 30 more blocks.   

1 block is made up of 32 triangles: 16 white, 16 blue or other.

Therefore, 30 blocks use 480 triangles of white, and 480 triangles of blue or other. 

For fun, altogether this 100 block quilt needs 3200 triangles, paired together 1600 times. 

It takes me 1 hour to pair the triangles for one block and then 1.5 hours to assemble those triangles into a fully assembled block. 2.5 hours per block x 100 = 250 hours.  

This time does not include the disassembly of the shirts, the cutting of the triangles, nor the end game of assembling them together nor the quilting, binding and finishing.  

My little grid shows:  Completed blocks - shaded.  Blocks in progress - dots.  

Most days I can work 1-1.5 hours on it, in the evening.  Which is actually quite a bit of time, really.  If this was the only thing I was interested in, then I could probably finish up all the blocks within 3 months.   But I'm extremely fickle and variable with my interests.   Before picking up this project again, I was sketching every night for just 30 minutes or so, and it was very cool. I'm starting to miss it, and hope to find a spot in the day to incorporate it.  Gardening season is also upon us.... Something has to give.

As of this writing, I'm assembling block 43/100 although it's about to get more complicated now that I want to begin murmuration, the directional composition of the triangles within the blocks and the intentional adding of colour.  

Stay tuned for part 3.