I had a lovely meeting with my midwife today, where we talked about labour and birth and the fact that my due date is now only six weeks away, and how quickly it’s gone. I do love my midwife, and it’s reassuring that my own thoughts on how I want things to go coincide with the group practice’s normal procedures. (Incidentally when I say my midwife I do mean that – I’m lucky enough to be with a practice that has community midwives so she was assigned to me from day one and comes to do all my visits at home. It’s very non-medical, which is how I think a normal pregnancy should be treated, and all I’ve had to go to hospital for are scans.) Happily, she’s now pregnant as well so our meetings aften involve me asking her how she’s doing too, and whether or not she’s managed to quell her addiction to ready salted crisps.

Once she’d gone I thought about those six short weeks, that could be as few as four if he’s eager to come out, or as many as eight if he isn’t, and decided it was about time I made a start on the boy’s quilt. Oh how I love to plan, and how I love to learn new things, and yet there hadn’t been room to contemplate doing either properly until I was in my new room.

It’s always been at the back of my mind though, and when I was going past Borders on Oxford St, who are having a mad closing down sale, I popped in and managed to pick up these two titles. The craft shelves were completely ravaged even though the sale had only been on a couple of days, so I counted myself lucky to get anything at all. Jelly Roll Quilts was almost left on the shelf, because I already had their other book, which includes charm packs and layer cakes, but I hadn’t found anything I really liked. 200 quilt blocks has a good techniques section at the end on putting the whole thing together, and I thought I’d be certain to find something in it.

I’m very pleased I got the former as it turns out, because a jelly roll is what I have, and their instructions on making the block I finally chose are specific to using the long strips, whereas the instructions in the other book are presumably for cutting from larger pieces of fabric and would have had me doing all sorts of unnecessary slicing.

I’ve settled on a simple nine patch block, which will make me feel as if I’m doing some proper piecing, but isn’t so complicated that I’ll doom myself to failure. I’m not entirely sure how big I want it to be, or even just how big it ends up being of its own accord, depending on how many blocks I make, but the quilt in the book (the ninepatch wonder) is mixed with hourglass squares and ends up being 64″ × 76″, which is probably too large for a baby.

I unfurled the roll to get a better look at the fabrics, and removed the pinks and yellows from the equation. I probably wouldn’t have included the pink even if I was having a girl and since I took this picture I’ve decided to remove the orange and simplify the colour scheme even more. I’m sure I’ll find something to do with the leftover strips, and I might even end up using some of them if I think the quilt will be too small.

Of course, no new skill would be complete without a spot of shopping, and my first purchase had to be a cutting ruler that measures in inches, since the two I have only have centimetres, and it makes no sense to use a strip measuring 2.5″ wide and a 1/4″foot on my machine if I can’t cut in inches. I went for the creative grids turn around ruler, since they have a nifty ability of easily measuring in whole and half inches, and while I was there I figured I might as well get some safety pins for basting. It’s a long way off but better to be prepared.

This makes it sound like I’m making progress, but have you any idea how long it’s going to take me to pair those strips up?