Only 90 days 'til Christmas...

I don't even remember whose blog I read that directed me to this site, but I do remember leaving a comment that I may never forgive her for doing so!

I'd never worked with homespuns before, but I saw these and immediately thought of a special someone (who may or may not be checking in here to see what I'm up to and therefore shall remain unidentifiable) who might just fit nicely under a nice flannel throw by the fire this holiday season. So I thought what the heck, I'll try something new, and ordered every blue plaid flannel they had.

Flannel homespuns...can't you just smell the chestnuts roasting?

Initially, I wanted to do a rag quilt, but then I found this pattern (from this book, which is hard to say three times fast but has some good patterns in it). So I loaded up on muslin at the Ice House, and they even dug around in the back room to find me some long-forgotten gray-blue plaid flannel for the backing (at 75% off -- woo-woo!), and I'm good to go!

From "40 Fabulous Quick-Cut Quilts" by Evelyn Sloppy,
whose work, anyway, is actually quite neat

I am, however, finding cutting plaids to be a little challenging. I've complained about pre-washing taking up time, and ironing (thinking ahead, though, I was pretty careful not to distort these so cutting wouldn't be a total nightmare) -- but not being able to stack these babies and produce five or six strips with one slash of the rotary cutter? Ack! It's messing with my quilting mojo!

I suppose I could layer them and cut without regard to the plaid, but I'd be even more frustrated if the lines were crooked (see? I can be a perfectionist when it's called for!). So I'm gutting it out (poor, poor Kate, so eager to put the foot to the floor) and slicing my strips from each individual fat quarter with such accuracy it hurts.

Patience. I am taking a really deep breath and exercising patience.