The elephant wedding quilt project beginning

The holiday is over and I'm ready to get started on my summer project.  My grandson and his bride to be picked the Elephant Abstractions quilt by Violet Craft as their wedding gift from me and I have nearly a year to get it done.  So, let's get started.  This may become a tutorial for paper piecing that I'll post as a tab later but let's see how this goes.

Getting organized is probably one of the most important things to do with a project of this size.  Mom was an organization queen and I learned from her so getting the steps to being ready for this project really isn't so bad.  To start with I had to take the pattern template pages to the office supply place and have every page printed to be used.  The templates in the pattern came printed front and back so you wouldn't use those and not have a pattern in the end.  Okay, that's done. It took awhile to cut all the templates apart and stack them in order.  There are 97 templates.  I have my work cut out for me.

Then, I always stitch the lines on the template pages without any thread in the machine top or bobbin.  I do that for 2 reasons.  For one, it makes folding on the lines so much easier.  And, I'll fold on those lines over and over.  The other reason is that when you're ready to tear off the paper, you have lots of holes to make it tear smoothly and cleanly.  Okay.  All the holes are stitched in all 97 templates.  Whew!  That's done.

Okay, paper templates are ready and stacked up in number order.  It's time to get the fabric washed and ready.  I wash my fabric before sewing just because I've always done that.  All this fabric is from the quilt shop so I know it's not going to bleed colors or anything like that.  But there could be a bit of shrinkage here and there. It is cotton after all and cotton shrinks. I'd rather have that out of the way now rather than have a surprise later. But, will I be able to tell which grey is metal and which is titanium once it's washed?  I decided to write the names of the fabrics detailed in the pattern with permanent fabric pens in the selvage of the different fabrics.  I don't want to get mixed up.  That would be bad.

And, I ironed each piece of fabric and folded it for cutting later in the process.  This pattern's color coding is by designs printed on the templates and by name.  So, just having the names won't help me much when I'm picking up fabrics and sewing them onto the template paper pieces.  So, I copied the designs from the templates off my printer to pin them onto the fabrics as well.  Okay.  I think I'm ready to start sewing.  Hmmmm 97 templates??  How long do you think this will take?  I'll try to post my progress and further hints and suggestions for paper piecing as I go along.  Keep checking in.  This is going to be FUN!!