Wild Garden

One of the many projects I have going right now is a Grandmother's Garden variation I call "Wild Garden". To the left is a segment in progress. The hexagons are 1" on a side. When the section has 6 hexagons on each side, I'll quilt it. When I have enough sections quilted, then I'll put them together into a wheelchair blanket for my honey. One of the other things I have in mind for these is a robe that I refer to as my "coat of many colors".

I love English Paper Piecing because it's 98% portable. There are really only two stages that aren't. The first is printing out the hexagon templates on full-sheet label paper (no pins required!); the other is cutting and sandwiching the batting and backing for each section. All the rest of it can be done anywhere; from cutting out the templates and sticking them to the fabric, all the way to connecting the quilted sections. I carry it along to do on the commute train (one of the joys of public transit), I do it while watching TV with Honey, I even do it at my desk while waiting for pages to load on my computer.

Another thing I like about working on small projects (or big projects in small sections) is that it lets me see progress very quickly, which is the sort of positive feedback I need. Not only that, but it lets me use up little pieces of fabric that might otherwise go to waste. One of the women I know at work is also a quilter, but she considers anything smaller than about 1/8 yard to be a "scrap"; for the kinds of things I make, that can be quite a bit of fabric! I can use anything bigger than 1/2" square, especially in foundation-pieced minis.

What are you working on?