English paper pieced hexagons

Today I thought I'd share my longest running sewing project; a English paper pieced queen sized bed quilt. This is the most I could get in one picture at a time. This quilt is big.
English paper piecing involves tacking fabric around cardboard shapes, then whip stitching them together. Usually people make flower rosettes. My quilt is completely random.

I began this years ago, sometime between the ages of nine and eleven. (I am 21 now). It began off innocently enough. One afternoon at my grandmother's she taught me how to make these hexagons. I sewed one rosette (which is now the centre of the quilt). I then decided I should turn it into a quilt, all fabrics being different to one another. I was always an ambitious and obsessive child.

The centre rosette. 

The quilt grew, and I decided I would get it finished for when I got married. At that point I assumed I would get married at around 30. When I was 19, and realised I wolud be getting married very soon, I decided to be sensible. I don't know If i will get it finished before I turn 30. I have the general size marked out. Each centre line is marked, and goes to the edge, which means the whole quilt is a wird cross shape at the moment, with large gaps at the corners which need filling

 The fabric is from all over the place; old projects, scrap boxes, and I hae even bought scrap bags on the internet. About a year ago I gave up on the no matching fabrics rule. My obsessiveness is waning slightly! I now just try to keep the matching ones relatively far apart.
There is no pattern to how pieces are placed, but i try and keep the colours mixed up as much as possible. Even randomness needs some plan behind it (especailly when a disproportionate amount of hexagons are blue florals. This combination to the right demonstrates how odd the quilt can get. A baby riding a dolphin sits under my mum's bridesmaid dress fabric.

 The quilt also acts as an I-spy quilt. There are numerous little characters, and animals on it, mainly from country style patchwork fabric. Here we have a novelty chicken. There are also cows, ducks, people, two geisha girls, snails, and rag dolls.

This gives you a bit more of an idea of what it look like overall. A number of years ago i counted 400 hexagons in this quilt. I now think the number is well over a thousand.

 One scrap bag I bought on Etsy had a lot of little Liberty scraps. I love scattering these through the quilt. This group also has a teddy bear, and some Christmas fabric.

There is fabric from all my old sewing projects in here as well. The blue and red floral is from this dress.

My plan is to eventually add a narrow cream border, and then hand quilt it. It's a real labour of love, an sewing tese hexagons together is incredibly addictive. The little papers end up scattered all through our apartment, and I'm constantly having to recollect them together, and assign them to their correct tins. (One for assembled hexagons, one for fabric and papers, one for paper clips).


Have any of you ever done any patchwork? I'm not sure how much overlap there is between patchwork and dressmaking blogs. I don't do much patchwork at the moment, but I am thinking over the next few months I will share all my past quilts on here. I have quite the collection.