Patchwork progress

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All the hand-quilty crinkliness I could want without having to sew together the top separately!

Been working on the Kawandi project lately, as well as another flag, which I'll post about soon. More to my heart is this hand-sewn eclectic lap blanket that could very well change the way I make quilts for the rest of my stitching days.

Sometimes life is like that, kind of how quilting took precedence over eleven years ago. Last year I was going to make a big deal about my decade behind the sewing machine; that never really happened. In another decade, will I wax lyrically about how for the first ten years I employed technology, then reverted to the less complicated method of needle and thread?

All I know is plotting out this quilt on my work table, then sewing it by hand has been EXHILARATING! I *might* even like it more than English paper piecing, LOL. Hmmm, another post for later methinks.

For now, other than a slightly sore right hand at the base of my thumb, the joy to emerge from a Kawandi-inspired manner of sewing is HIGH on my list of happiness. Non-harmful happiness is a must these days. I adore the colours, I love the simplicity, I don't even mind using heaps of pins to keep it all together. That's MY manner of Kawandi, at least for a large project. I'm curious if that alters in the next quilt.

The next Kawandi quilt might have an elaborately pieced back, courtesy of prints I threw on the design wall some weeks ago, and stare at daily while doing my stretches, where the design wall lives. Yesterday while studying it, I came up with the currently brilliant notion of finishing it, then using it as the back for my next Kawandi quilt. (I use the term Kawandi VERY LOOSELY, merely to denote the hand-sewing similarities I apply to a method I'm grateful to have just discovered.) It would also be lap-sized, yet bigger than what I'm currently stitching, also a good experience to gauge what I think of sewing through a pieced backing. And it would get those fabrics off the design wall, not that I have anything immediately I want to put on it.

The beauty of Kawandi is there's no need for a design wall. Organizing such a quilt happens on the fly, scrap by scrap, making for a gorgeous arrangement of surprisingly copacetic prints. That it's improv lends itself to a random but at times arranged design, which I realized last night. I'd planned to add low volume prints on the next round of fabrics, but instead I'll continue with vibrant hues, wanting to highlight the corner EPP blocks even more.

Made from leftovers of Red Sky at Night, the border sports low volume prints. Perhaps one more inner round of bright scraps, then I'll stitch lighter hues.

It's been lovely immersing myself in this quilt, necessary too. I hope whatever you do today brings you JOY and PEACE. 

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