A Whole Lotta Cuttin' Goin' On

My kitchen table has finally been released from bondage, and none too soon as far as the Official Cookie Tester was concerned, I'm sure. I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and cut everything for Country Charmer, but I brought it upstairs rather than doing it in my sewing room so, with the exception of one small corner, the table has pretty much been unusable by anyone else. Incentive enough to move things along, and now the cutting's done. Yippeee skipeee!

The pattern includes a block layout sheet so that you can test your colour combinations, but once I got the hang of the piece sizes and where they sit in the block, I just laid them out on my cutting board. Besides, there was so much fabric flying around in a relatively small space that it was just easier to work on the board.

Each block has four different pattern pieces and then several background pieces. As each combination was cut I'd stack them together and lay them out on a tray. It helped me keep track of how many blocks I had cut as well as the distribution of fabric colours/prints.

I'm adding an additional row and a column of blocks because I want this to fit our bed so I cut for 30 blocks instead of 20. This is the Coles Notes version of what the quilt will look like, without the cream backing. I'll play with the final layout as the blocks are made but it was good to see a bird's eye view of things. I like!....M