An insane quilting project

Done and done! At least when you know what you should
see,  you can see it. (Can you?)

  This project I did approx. two years ago. It's a huge patchwork of 2400 pieces, trying to represent a picture of my pet dog. It is best seen from a distance.
 
   I'm not a big fan of quilting, but back then I had craft as school subject and everybody had to make something with quilts. The idea for this I got when I was making knitting patterns from photographs. So I had a pattern of the picture in question ready when our teacher told us what we were going to do. That means that the pattern is actually meant for knitting, not quilting.. I just love doing everything the hardest way for some reason..  ;)  In fact, I'm not really sure why I did this though, because I never make patchworks at home and don't like making them..
 
   Firstly I cut all the pieces (and extra pieces) from all the 9 colours. If I remember right, there are over 700 pieces of the brightest green..

  But you could still call me lazy, because I used only nine colours instead of 16. :) But it is hard enough with nine for there indeed are 2400 pieces sewn together... So better "title" would be crazy ;D

  After all pieces were cut I started to sew them in pairs, then paired the pairs... Till I had all the 60 lines of 40 pieces in the proper order.
 I attached a line number on each line to help organising the lines in the right order.
 

And this is the pattern. For the final project, I removed
a few lines from sides to make it a better
shape for a blanket.

  When I had the 60 lines I sew them in pairs again, then in groups of four, then eight.... Until I had just one heavy piece of fabrics put together. From time to time I had to iron the seam allowances flat.
 

Here´s the original picture. (Taken by me.)

  Then I put on the sides and attaches the quilted side to the one piece back and placed a cotton wool sheet between the top and the back. Turned it around and closed the hole left for flipping the blanket inside out.

  Then was still one more step to accomplish: stitching. I stitched around the edges of the "image" and between every 4th quilt, both vertically and horizontally.

   I think I succeed, but would never do it again. It's a horrible amount of sewing and textile dust.. Well if somebody was willing to pay me for making them something similar, then it would be totally different and I would make as many of them as I'd be paid for. ;) "Orders here, please!"...heh..
 
  But please, don't attempt it, it kills your back, fingers, lungs and brain. Unless, of course, if done in like a year or so, it's no problem, but then it's very likely to forget where each piece belongs. So for your sake, don't!
 
  Well, anyway, it's nicely soft and warm, so no regrets. :) ...in addition, after you've worked your ass off, you can go and sleep under your new blanket!


  CHEERS! Hopefully you enjoyed this post! Again, I like having comments and mail! (craftsmanmusical6@gmail.com) And your orders for photography-representing patchworks! ;) (Joking... But, seriously, I'd be happy to craft for you if you want to order something, almost anything is possible to organise!)

 Until next time!