My First Quilt: Part 4

Once I was organized, it was smooth sailing–er, sewing. Progressing horizontally across the quilt, I sewed pairs of blocks together, and then sewed sets of double-blocks together and sew on (sorry, I couldn't resist). This part went pretty quickly. Once that was finished, I sewed the horizontal bars together and le voilà!

It's not completely done yet. It needs a border, and a backing, binding, and then it needs to be quilted; but it's been hanging out in this maybe-80%-finished state for a while.

These are the fabrics I had originally picked out for the border and the back.

I'm not quite loving them. They just don't quite seem to fit. And I haven't been a rush to find something else, either.

My First Quilt: Part 3

When we left off, I had cut the fabric and drawn myself a map.

When I picked it up again, I realized many of my cuts were off and I had lost my map.

If the cuts were just crooked, I could have made it work. And many of them were, but there were a few that were waves. I'll post a picture as soon as I can find one, but I have no idea what happened. I couldn't repeat it if I tried.

I put on my blinders and kept sewing--despite all common sense--because I could sort it all out later and it would be fine. I was lying.

I had no map. I did not have all the blocks that I started with. I had no idea what I was going to do.

I ripped out most of the seams that had been sewn, and sorted and counted my blocks again. Then I started arranging them on the floor until it seemed to work again. I had to make two important sacrifices:

1. The quilt would be whatever size it wanted to be. It definitely would not cover a queen size bed as intended, and probably wouldn't even cover a twin. It will hang out at the foot of the bed, I guess?
2. Apparent randomness went out the window. The blocks would have to follow a certain sequence so that one block didn't touch any two of the same.

That is how we arrived at this picture:

I didn't just draw a map this time. Oh, no. I drew a map, and labelled it, and stapled a swatch of each fabric to the map. Then I took about six dozen pictures. You know, just in case I accidentally deleted 71 of them.

When I put the blocks away, I kept them arranged in their rows, paper clipping a scrap of paper with the row number written on it. The rows were then stacked chronologically--it would be smooth sailling from here on out.

Ten o'clock on a Friday night. Bo was almost as tired as I was. Almost.

My First Quilt: Part 2

When I started planning this quilt, I knew I couldn't sew a straight line to save my life. I wanted to keep it simple, I wanted to enjoy the process (ha!); which, in my mind, meant not ripping out and redoing every single seam until it was perfect.

I decided on an off-set brick pattern, in order to avoid an almost-four-corners situation. You know, when there's a little jog because (Oops!) Arizona is crooked. And wide seam allowances, so that when I got of course, I could allow for it and hide it.

I wanted the pattern to be somewhat random, but I did not want any one square to touch two squares of the same fabric.

I wanted this (above) as opposed to that (below)

Although based on my sketch, I'm liking the latter better.

Anyway, I cut my fabric (6" x 4" rectangles), drew myself a map and called it a night.

My First Quilt: Part 1

Back when I worked at a fabric and craft store, I loved helping customers choose fabrics for quilts. Loved it. Almost as much as I loved putting the fabric away. Okay, maybe the quilting thing is actually second the putting-things-away thing. I loved my job.

Somewhere along the line, I decided I needed to pick out some fabrics for myself.


Picking the fabric was the easy part.

Picking the fabric was the only easy part.

This was the first pick I took, roughly half-way through. At the time, the only thing preventing me from chucking the whole thing was my own pigheadedness. But more on that tomorrow!

Mitered Square Blanket

This partially-finished blanket had been languishing in the bedroom closet for a long time. When I started it, I intended to throw it on the couch in the living room to tie everything together. However, at the time I was single and living on my own in a tiny apartment. It was tiny, but it was cute and it was mine. I loved it. It was July 2010.

I moved out of that apartment, and moved again after that. That living room didn't exist anymore. When this stash busting project started, I picked it up again. I had I think 5 completed large squares, some of them were sewn together, others weren't. I found my notes (I made a smaller version), and started cruising. My husband fell in love with it, and insists that we save it for our eventual children.