The young, bitter blogger has transformed into a elderly cat lady. It seems I have found harmony and have decided to disrupt that calm with the endeavor of quilting.
You may believe that this pastime is reserved for grannies and the feeble-minded, pack-rat hoarders of the backwoods, but I have discovered that this task is the marriage between extreme OCD, architecture, mathematical genius and incredible dexterity.
I thought I knew something about quilting because a while ago, I spent an entire year quilting my uncle's old concert tees together .
As you can see, there is nothing really uniform about the segments - I kind of just sewed everything together and hoped for the best - after backing every single shirt with jersey so they would all stretch the same.
It's been a few years now and the scars have healed over. I thought that a reasonable project I could do was do make the real deal. I was armed with a book my mother bought me and a pattern I liked. There are a lot of rules on quilterschache.com about stealing stuff - so I am telling you now, the block I am using comes from that site - click the link.
The first thing I learned in my journey was that I am still bad at math despite cramming for the GRE many years ago. Figuring out how much fabric I needed was difficult because of the way fabric is sold and because I did not use equations mixed with tangrams to get my numbers. I basically winged it - and had to go back to Jo Ann's three times. The last time I needed more fabric I was so embarrassed that I ordered it online. I don't know how many times I can tell the cutting lady that I suck at this sort of thing. The book AND the site afford you many tools to use to figure out how much you'll need, so of course, I estimated.
Anyway, step 1 was to cut.
After more math and heartbreak, I figured out that I would need 49 blocks to make a queen sized quilt. That meant cutting 98 strips of some fabric - for each color...one of them twice. They keep advising that you are exact, but fabric isn't exactly wood - it stretches and it behaves weird and sometimes I am like 1/8th off and it is no good. This is where the OCD can really be an advantage.
Oh, and before you ask, I am not hand-quilting. As it is, this will take me 6 months. I do know someone who did hand-quilt her own, but she is crazy. I can't tell if it was from quilting or if she was that way before...
So, four days later, I have all my pieces cut. Now comes the sewing. I immediately wasted a few squares on retarded things like sewing them on the wrong side o
r matching them up incorrectly. Once I got everything straight, it was midnight and I wasn't going to bed until 1 block of 49 was finished.It was finished ...but disappointing.
As you can clearly see, things are mismatched and not aligned.
The back wasn't looking too hot either.
So,after a good night's rest, a LOT of coffee, a hot iron and my most stubborn qualities all riled up, I tried again.
I did these things differently:
I ironed everything
I cut uneven sides down to match before sewing
I made my 1/4 inch seam as scant as I could (that's craftspeak for I sewed along at a little less than 1/4 inch.)
I ironed, trimmed and measured before assembling the blocks into rows and then again before putting the rows together. The slight puckering you will see below is due to too much ironing and no starch. I will adjust for the next one.
So, here's the 2nd block.
There are still slight misalignments, but not as bad as the one before. This block also has the correct shape overall. (YAY!)
Here is the back:
I decided not to split the seams here. It was easier this way, but I am not sure if it is correct. It may account for the slight puckering. Either way, I am MUCH more pleased with the second block of 49!At the very end, it should look like this according to quilterscache.com
If you have any tips, please share. I will incorporate them into the next block and you can see your own help hard at work.
See you on the next block.
