When people talk about the glamorous world of quilting (and they do, I’m sure), they never mention all the intense manual labor that’s involved before you can even begin to quilt. The laundry, the ironing, the cutting … did I mention the ironing? I’m not a fan of ironing.

I was thinking I need one of those Big Boards to make ironing large pieces of fabric easier. Then I realized that what would really make ironing fabric easier is having someone else do it for me. My daughter did say she’s interested in helping me with this project. Hmmmm, something to consider.

In the meantime, I’m trying to space out all the fabric washing over a few weeks, so my ironing arm (which doubles as my bowling arm) doesn’t hurt too much. I’ve got the red background fabric and the black backing fabric done, plus most of the various whites, creams, tans, and ‘redwork’ patterns.

I’ve still got all the greens to do, plus replacement fabrics for the missing ones, which I’m slowly finding. More on that next time.

For now, though, I have enough fabric prepared that I could start cutting out the pieces for a block and actually do some sewing.

The pieces in these blocks are so small that hand piecing (sewing together the pieces of fabric by hand instead of using a sewing machine, for you lay people who are for some reason interested in reading this blog) is called for on some of the blocks. Glutton for punishment that I am, I decided I’d hand piece all of them.

The nice thing about hand piecing is that your project is much more portable. You can pop the fabric pieces, needle and thread, and some scissors in your purse, and then work on it while you wait your turn at the dentist, or sit in a boring teleconference … the possibilities are endless.

I’ve done hand piecing before, but it’s been quite a while, and I’ve been wanting to try a new hand piecing technique from Jinny Beyer’s book, Quiltmaking By Hand. So, while I’ve been making slow progress on the laundry and ironing, I’ve also been practicing my hand sewing skills.

The technique is not very intuitive for me, and I still feel pretty clunky doing it, but it is fast, and turns out nice sharp points (meaning that everything lines up at places where the seams intersect, for you lay people who haven’t stopped reading yet). I’m sure it’ll feel quite natural after I’ve done 225 blocks this way.

Here’s a four-patch practice block that I made using Jinny Beyer’s technique:

It looks larger on the right side because I’m a terrible picture taker, not because I’m a terrible quilter. And get a load of those sharp points!

I’m getting pretty excited about starting the first block. Now if I could just find someone to finish this ironing for me …