Tony Danza is Getting Bigger

Well, we’re making progress on Tony Danza, but it is slooooooow.  And I’m a little worried about his eyes.

The biggest issue is that postage stamp quilts, by their nature, are time-consuming to sew.  They just take a minute to put together, that’s all.  And I haven’t exactly been devoting the kind of time that Tony Danza deserves.  Honestly, I cut the ridiculous thing out in January–after nearly TWO YEARS of talking about it.  You’d think I would buckle down already.  But with this deadline looming, I think I might be feeling the last surges of urgency.  So next week, once Quilt Market is past and my last travel obligation of 2012 is completed, Tony gets to move to the front of the line and get the attention he so rightly has coming to him.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a little postage stamp quilt research I’ve done.  There are a surprising number of ways to put together something that seems so straightforward.  I have wondered more than once if I’ve chosen the right one in making Tony.  My biggest consideration has been to the quilting–I think this quilt will need some heavy quilting stitches in order to give the face some definition, and I was concerned that if the individual blocks were too substantial that the stitches would make the entire piece really stiff.  I guess we’ll all find out at the same time, right?

If you’re slightly less nutty than I am, and want to make one of these lovely quilts (but maybe not with someone’s face on it), check out these inspiring tutorials around the Interwebs:

Rita from Red Pepper Quilts has an awesome strip-pieced postage stamp quilt tutorial

PS I Quilt did a fab postage stamp quilt-along last year, using jelly rolls to minimize the cutting required.

Rachel from Stitched in Color has a great overview of postage stamp quilts with awesome inspiration photos.

Elizabeth Hartman of Oh! Fransson does a really excellent and precise postage stamp block on her blog.

Liesl Made has a great printable Google doc tutorial for her postage stamp quilt block.

My sincere hope is that I’ll finish up Tony in time, and then find that making a scrappy postage stamp quilt isn’t nearly as hard as making one based on a photograph.  Like Flossie has been saying lately, I love the look, but I’m wondering what on earth possessed me to plan and commit to doing TWO matching postage stamp quilts for the little girls’ room AND cut scraps for a whole other scrappy version.  Pray for me, people.  I think I might have entered the land of the Crazy Lady Quilter.