Maltaville Album Quilt ~ I’m ready to start the centre…

I can’t wait to start cutting out fabric…

It seems to have taken so long to get to this stage.

For a long time it has been only in the first rough draft stage.

Just a basic outline with some very general placement to judge the spacing but this stage allows me to see how the shapes will fit and the scale the individual pieces need to be.

However straight away I wasn’t happy with the vine.

It was too uniform because I had used a compass to put the margins for the inside and outside of the vine, which is well and good for reference points but it needed to be more free-form.

Many versions (and days) later I had this -above- which I am happy with but all the shapes are hand drawn so they are not exactly the same…way too many templates.

At that point I was really itching to get the fabric out and start the  block.

I thought “I can work off this drawing and make a good master copy later”.

I just wanted to start sewing.

But I controlled my natural impulsiveness and stayed focused…

I’m glad I did because I altered the stems again for the better, changing the way it branches off in to the corner roses.

And made templates for the shapes so that there won’t be a million different templates.

I figure that with the stitching little variances will occur anyway.

and fiddled about with the spacing again.

I think this way it will work well, there is a frame work there but still scope to place the flowers and leaves randomly.

I’m tossing up whether to add something to the middle (optional of course)

I could…

add an inscription or poem

applique something ~ bird?  Not more grapes!

Or have it perfect for some intricate quilting.

Any suggestions?