Tags
(WIP = Work in Progress)
Happy Wednesday, all, and it’s especially happy for me because I have finished the baby quilt!
If you recall, this was a commission for a co-worker of my sister’s. It was a simple quilt–big blueberries on one side, small on the other, blue border on both sides, cross-hatching for the quilting, ruffle around the edge–but there was a fair bit of hand-stitching, so it took me a while.
Things I learned doing this project:
- There is a reason that people don’t put a narrow border on both sides of a quilt, which is that the quilting you do will inevitably shift the border a bit, and then any quilting you do on or near the border will be wonky. The only way I know to make sure that doesn’t happen is to carefully line up and hand baste the two sides of the border together so that there won’t be shifting. Slow and laborious, but it did the trick.
- I still really, really hate making gathers.
- I really, really, profoundly suck at estimating the time needed for sewing projects. I mean, I knew this, but yeah, it’s bad. When I was a grad student, I was told about the Rule of Threes for research: studies will always take three times as long as you expect, cost three times as much, and require three times as many experimental subjects. I suspect the formula is similar for sewing projects.
I had set a goal for myself of finishing the quilt by Sunday night, but I finally finished at 2:00 Tuesday morning (and my fingers are still sore from that marathon binding session). I’m afraid I don’t have any pics of the whole quilt, as it had just come out of the dryer, and I was desperate to keep it cat-hair-free until I could deliver it. The only place my cats don’t sit is this little table next to my sewing machine, so that’s where I put the quilt for photos.
Will you just look at that (almost) perfectly-lined-up border quilting?!?
The good news: I have some scraps of this super-cute fabric to use in future quilts. The bad news: I still haven’t learned how to keep the damn camera strap out of my pictures.
Anyway, now that this project is done and delivered (YAY), I think it may be time to do something about Mending Mountain.
All the ugh.
My sewing room is my own little comfy nest and I’m feeling these days like I want to take better care of it. In addition to dealing with the Mountain, there’s the fabric inventory in Evernote, the project/fabric use spreadsheet (which I took a first whack at the other day), and using up some stash so that everything fits better into its assigned space. I’m also making a pile of fabric to donate. If I don’t love it, and it’s not long enough to be useful for muslins, out it goes.
I’ve got a couple of summer tops in mind to help use up some of these weird little 1 to 1 1/2 yard pieces of fabric I have. These two, for example, are going to be combined to make view D here.
So hard to take pictures in this harsh white light we have here these days. 😦
That blue on the left has been in the stash for years and may be from Wal-Mart, I’m not sure. The navy eyelet on the right (SO CUTE) is from SCRAP.
Off to start my way up the Mountain. Wish me luck.
STH
