Learning Experience

Making this quilt was different from others I had started. I really wanted to finish this one. I'd had trouble with pieces not fitting before, so I'd done my homework about how to do better piecing. I was absolutely anal about my seams being the same size. I trimmed every single piece, every new sewn unit--absolutely positively everything was trimmed. It was tedious and time consuming but the sewing went unbelievably fast, and there was less trimming to do as the units got bigger.

In retrospect, I probably went overboard. But it did make the sewing go smoothly and the quilt dimensions come out right. It also taught me about fudging seams when pieces just aren't the right size.

New blogger mistake, not moving the sewing machine cords. >.<

But good gravy. It was hours, and hours, and hours of trimming and pressing. It was mid-summer, very hot, and while I was quilting in my air-conditioned bedroom and therefore very happy to be there, it is around this level of monotony that my brain turns to goo. The repetitive quality gets to a point where I do stupid things like cut my leg with a rotary cutter because the only space large enough for the mat is on the floor (I have a table now, it is a vast improvement) and I just stopped paying attention to exactly where my leg is in relation to the circular razor in my hand. I was lucky the cut was shallow, but sweat and blood is not a metaphor for this quilt.

At some point, in a gasp of self preservation, I started watching Heroes (then off the air). This was a Really Good Plan.

This led to a renewed appreciation of the awesome that is George Takei and a brief but
profound crush on Zachary Quinto's eyebrows.

I have no idea the actual number of hours I spend working on this quilt, but I watched all four seasons of Heroes and then moved on to five of the original Star Trek films before finally caving and watching the first season of Original Trek, which I somehow managed to make it to adulthood without seeing. (This is a failure of geekdom I cannot rationalize or explain. I don't know what happened. I even missed the unbelievable nerditude of my family's referral to adults as "grups". I don't know how I missed this.) Assuming I was always watching something I think it comes out to something like 150 hours, but between the initial cutting and having fun with scraps making the backing it was definitely more.

I think it came out well though:

I'm really, really pleased with it. So pleased I've been a bit terrified to quilt it, as my quilting skills are not quite up to snuff. So it sits in the UFO pile for now. Eventually I'll get good enough at the quilting or am not poor as dirt have enough extra cash to get it done professionally. Hopefully I'll have finished the backing by then. ;-)

Things I learned:

-Making the points of triangles line up is a pain to do freehand. Pins are your friends. This tutorial from Connecting Threads (not affiliated, just quality!) has some excellent pointers for making points line up.

-Making something look random is harder to do than you might expect. I did at least four floor layouts for this quilt before I got something I liked, including one with my mom helping out. This is definitely something to do in the planning stage rather than the assembly stage!

-Sewing with polyester thread is no fun. At all. I had no clue when I started, and by the time I knew better it was too late to turn back. Cotton thread all the way.

It started with a jelly roll

I picked up a Bali Pop similar to this one, several years ago (the one I bought has since been retired) at the World Quilt Show. It had been a long time since I'd tried anything with quilting or sewing, but I fell in love with it, so I picked it up and figured I'd do something with it. Something was fairly nebulous at the time.

That word choice wasn't deliberate at all. I don't know what you're talking about.

Bali pops or jelly rolls (for the uninitiated) are a roll of 2 1/2" x width of fabric strips. They contain anywhere from 20 to 45 strips, usually all from the same fabric collection. There are a few other so called "pre-cuts," also containing all the fabrics from a given collection, including 5' squares (charms) and 10' squares (layer cakes). They go by different names depending on the manufacturer.

Why go for a random assortment rather than yardage? Well, some people, myself included, prefer the scrappy look but don't have years worth of leftovers to actually make a scrappy quilt. Some prefer it as more budget-friendly than buying fat quarters. Some are intimidated by color selection with their first project--or have problems with vision. There are a lot of reasons, and the results can be beautiful and fun!

So, (many years ago, I hit up my local quilt shop, picked out a pattern intended for a jelly roll, and pulled some fabric out of my mother's stash for the background. I sorted my strips, started sewing them, and when i started cutting the background realized it felt...off. I had been a knitter for years, and knitters are very familiar with "mystery yarn," so I did the standard test most knitters do: I took a scrap and I burnt it.

100% cotton fabric will burn like paper: cleanly, with a white ash. If there is polyester or acrylic in it, it will melt, have a strong odor, greasy black smoke, and leave a hard, plastic-y ash (which only makes sense, since it is plastic). My lovely light purple fabric melted the minute it touched fire. So, off to my LQS for a new background. I found one, and boy, was it fantastic:

*Photograph may have been taken with a potato.

At some point, the project got derailed. I'm not sure exactly when, but it all got packed into a bag and put away for years. It was probably that I went back to school. At the time, I was smart enough to do something that probably let me finish the project:

I mean, it doesn't have to be Ziplocs. But this way I don't sound
like an idiot talking about "resealable bags."

Labeled ziplocks are about the best storage method for cut pieces out there. They're cheap, convenient, water and insect proof, and they're see-through. So, in the summer of 2011, freshly graduated, unemployed, and bored out of my skull, I went into my stash and found this:

Nebulas are where stars are born. (Astronomical humor does it with a Big Bang.)

The ziplock is photobombing.

My pattern, my fabrics, all of my progress to that point, labelled and ready to go for the next steps. And go I did.

Hello, World!

Hey there folks!

I've been crafting for a long, long time, and I've been a lurker on so many blogs its hard to count. I figured it was probably about time I start sharing my own creations. Right now, this blog is a work in progress. Its going to change and develop over the next several months, and will slowly morph into the best format I can make it.

But what is it going to do?? you ask. Well. This:

And this:

Are definitely up for starters.

This blog is going to be an "at least once weekly" blog. Even if I don't have something in the works, I will find something cool for you (there is always something cool.)

So stay tuned, and stay groovy people!