Starting the Crazy Project

Well, the head-cold status has moved from "Wretched" to "Rotten".  I'm trying to wean off the meds as I feel that I'm existing in a world between "Fantasia" and "Matrix".  I took another day off to recover, but decided to live dangerously...using both irons and rotary cutters.  The risk paid off and I got much done (and no band-aids).

I spent Mother's Day sorting and double checking my fabric selections against the DMC Needlework Threads Color Card.  You see...this crazy project involves converting a cross-stitch pattern into a quilt.  Since I'd been collecting the fabrics over 1 year and 12 quiltshops, some of my choices needed to be re-arranged to  make a better color blend.

Then I started cutting 1.5" strips, which in turn were cut into 1.5", 3" & 4.5" pieces.  Then shoved into an embroidery floss organizer.  The yellow cardstock labels have the symbol, color # and color name written on them, in the hopes that I can keep this all straight.   I cut the greens on Sunday, and enough of the blues to do the fussy sections.

Here's the pattern and calculations that I've been dragging around with me.  The whole cross-stitch is 118x148.  Since I'm using a 1" finished square, I'll need to crop the sides and bottom of the pattern to a rational quilt size.  My original planning was 72x96, but I've already decided that I need to include more of the bottom of the picture.  Will just have to work that out as I go.  Oh, and  don't be concerned by the printout colors, my printer ink was running out that day.  Monet's painting is really blue & green.

You'll have to use your imagination on this part.  The upper green is part of the parasol.  The lower green blob is the upper part of the woman's face.  The blank spaces are 2 shades of green that were completely wrong, and a shade of blue that I didn't have enough of (thanks to the re-arrangement of colors...see paragraph 2).  These are all fused to a printed interfacing made by Quiltsmart.  Unfortunately I misread the panel size as being the number of squares.  I'm saving the panels for the detailed sections of the woman and the boy.   I hope to get lots done on this quilt over the next couple weeks to keep me motivated to finish.