Amongst my English Paper Piecing obsessions – La Passacaglia and the new bom All over the Octagon, I haven’t forgotten my beautiful Mermaid Candy quilt. This quilt has so many fabrics, blocks and pieces that I have decided it will be easier if I do a large amount of cutting and piecing for it in one hit, before packing it up for a little while and sharing the attention. The last couple of weeks turned out to be perfect for catching up on some of these gorgeous blocks, and experimenting further with the colour and fabric arrangement.
Here are the new additions to the Mermaid Candy family – I think I cheated a little bit by making so many of the tumbler blocks as they piece up so fast.
My very small organisational streak has surfaced and I have actually started a spreadsheet listing how many of each block design is needed vs. how many I have made. I expected it to be very depressing however I have achieved more than I realised! It was also a valuable exercise to see how many of the different paper piecing shapes I would need – for example I am already out of the large diamonds that make up the tumbler blocks, but I will not use up a whole packet of the smaller triangles (seen above around the smaller hexagon making a star) as I am able to take them out and reuse them repeatedly.
I am still having lots of fun fussy-cutting out the motif’s from the Heather Ross Mendocino fabric, although I can’t say that the octopus’ are my favourite from the range. I also still love my colour and fabric selection, the unexpected mixture of fuschia, mustard and purple, with accents of almost red.
This sweet little star featuring Tula Pink’s fabric is my current favourite, although it is a bit like having to choose a favourite child!
Here is my happy stack of hexagons – all the various ones I have made so far not including the full size single piece feature ones.
How do you keep track of completed blocks in a complicated pattern like this one? Do you like crossing them off a list, or do you prefer a less structured approach?
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Agnes
I really love this palette you chose – the magenta/pinks/coral with mustard yellow is lovely! I haven’t done a complicated EPP project yet but I have recently sewn a sampler quilt with tons of blocks, big and small, and it felt gratifying to cross things off a master list. I wish complicated quilt patterns had a check list for us!