Monday, March 5, 2018

Finally finished!

I have lots to catch up on (including a few draft posts) but, for now, I will celebrate finally finishing the wedding quilt for our friends (#1 Indians fans in the world).  If I started this quilt from scratch today, it wouldn't take much time and effort but I seemed to bring lots of challenges to the process (one way or another).  Our friends who requested the quilt planned to visit in March for spring training so I managed to finish the quilt just in time. 


Just so I can remind myself of some of the lessons learned from this one, I'll memorialize it here.


When our friends first asked for a quilt ("an Indians quilt", specifically), I looked for fabric and immediately found these great (haha!) panels on Etsy.  They were probably 10 years old so I got to pay "vintage" prices for the panel which had 3 each of 2 images and a border print on each edge.  They wanted a useable quilt rather than a quilt for their bed so I thought starting with panels would be great--less chance of overcomplicating it.  The first challenge was the number and size of the panels.  They were about 15.5" finished which is pretty big when pairing it with piecing.  I hate clunky piecing.


While I was mulling over what to pair the panels with, Kathy suggested they might coordinate well with fireworks-themed fabrics.  This was a great idea and she must have planted that seed around the time that Quilts and Sew Forth had a patriotic holiday fabric sale.  I stocked up on several 1 yard cuts and finished a couple of skinny bolts.  I had no plan but, at that point, had a stash to work with.  I don't think I had any patriotic fabric at that point. At some point, I bought a couple of baseball prints too and some Indians logo fabric online.


Two years went by as I hemmed and hawed over ideas and ... moved out of state where maybe Miss Manners wouldn't find me and chastise me for the wedding gift faux pas.  I started scouring Pinterest for inspiration and kept seeing t-shirt quilts and panel quilts that had potential.  I finally settled on a t-shirt quilt with an asymetrical design, large panels and a narrow variety of prints.  There was no credit on the pin and I couldn't find a source or pattern to go with it.  I was ok with that because it was unlikely it would line up with my panel sizes anyway  Later, I learned that the t-shirt quilt was based on a purchased pattern called The Big EZ Sewing Pattern.


I made a test block to check my math.  Everything looked good and I was making great progress as I started cutting large squares of all of my RWB stash.  I made four patches to coordinate with the solid blocks.  I was really making fast progress!  That was about the time that I realized that my math and tests were based on an unsashed panel and should have been aligned to a sashed panel.  That meant that all of the cutting and piecing was 3/4 inch too small. I couldn't cut the panels so I had to start over again.


I tossed aside all of the undersized cuts and started over again with a little less wind in my sails.  Just like it always takes longer than you think to make a top from blocks, the sashing was more tedious and time consuming than I'd expected. The sashing used white one white and I bought yardage from Joann's since I didn't have a big piece of one print and wanted to get started on a Sunday when the shops were closed.  Of course, I ran out of sashing about 2/3 of the way through and couldn't find the print at any of the local Joann's.  I bought a second print and rationalized that it was just white on white and it wouldn't matter.


When I pieced it based on my interpretation of the photo I'd seen, I didn't like the way the panels were against the border so I added another half row.  At that point, it was starting to get to be more of a twin size but I rationalized that it was ok and they wouldn't feel trapped under this larger than expected quilt.  I was making good progress by the time I got to the border and realized that I didn't have enough of the Indians logo fabric left for a border.  I had to wait to mail order it.  More time passed.  More struggles to stay motivated to get it done.  While I waited for the fabric to come, I designed a top for Brady that would use all of the offcuts from the first measurements.  Sigh.


When I got the fabric, I realized that the directional repeats would work perfectly for the border measurements I wanted.  Success, for once!  The borders went on well even though they made it even bigger (duh).  I decided to work on it at our next guilt sewing session (once a month at the community center) where I could layer it up.  I packed up the quilt top plus the Halloween Friendship quilt top, two batts, pins, etc. and headed off to the sewing meeting.


I started laying out the Halloween quilt first, using my last Quilter's Select batt.  This monthly sewing gathering includes any quilters, from any area or guild.  As I was smoothing out the quilt top, multiple members of the peanut gallery would stop by to critique and criticize the idea of even doing such a top.  They thought I'd made the trip around the world blocks using individually cut squares and all sorts of other silly techniques.  I wasted my breath trying to explain that it was a bargello technique and that my friends had made most of the blocks for me.  Most importantly, I explained how much I love how it turned out.  They didn't get it.  Oh well, I kept pinning. By the time I was ready to pin the Indians quilt, I was getting bored with pinning and I was annoyed with about a third of the people in the room.


Since the Indians quilt top was so big (too big), I had to put together six tables so that I could get most of it on the table and "make it easier for myself". Well, that was an unpopular move with the rest of the room even though there were still several tables left.  If these people didn't "get" the Halloween quilt, they certainly didn't get the reason to make an Indians quilt.  By this time, I was pretty good at ignoring them but it was annoying.  It also made me pick up my pace so I could get the heck out of there ASAP. 


I laid out the backing then pulled out the queen sized Hobbs cotton batt that I'd brought. It had the price written on it so I must have bought it at a quilt shop at some point.  I've always liked Hobbs and it used to be all that I used.  As I smoothed out the batt, I couldn't help but notice that it had a big, darkened curved line on it where the batt was fused together like a curved dart.  A 4 year old child could have slept under the hump that formed.  I smoothed and smoothed.  I tried turning the batt so that some of that area would be cut off when I trimmed the edges.  I started pinning faster and faster. I was "done" at that point and just wanted to go home. After I pinned the entire quilt (still too big), I went to untape the backing and saw that I had about a 2 inch pleat/bubble in the backing pretty close to the middle and running the length of the quilt.  Well, that's never happened before.  Crap, crap, crap.  I bundled all of my things up to leave, knowing I'd have to take out at least half of those pins and somehow re-baste it.  It was not a good day.


I went home and started unpinning.  Since I was out of batting, I'd need to order more.  For the last couple of years, I've been buying it by the case so I'd always have it on hand.  I'd been reading a lot about wool batting and decided to order wool--thinking it would be a good choice for quilts that will live in Arizona, too.  Now I had to wait for the mail order batting to arrive, despite the fact that my years of patience were now gone.  I, also, needed to figure out how I was going to baste it since the monthly group crowd and the tiny tables weren't working.  I started researching 8 foot tables that I could store and maybe use for dyeing in the future, etc. I hit tons of dead ends with that.  I won't even bore you with the details.  Meanwhile, there is always lots of donating, bartering, and selling going on in our neighborhood since so many people are moving into the neighborhood.  I looked on the neighborhood selling page but there were no tables. I decided to put out an ISO ad for one of the brown tables I used to have because that was exactly what I wanted.  I could use my existing clips, etc.  Before I could post the ad, I got side-tracked but, when I came back to my computer, one of my friends who lives just a few houses away had posted one of the exact tables I was looking for. I think she wanted $10.  SOLD.  Things were starting to go my way.  It must have been time to let my guard down, not.


I got the table. The batting arrived.  I re-pressed the backing from the failed attempt and started layering up in the driveway.  It was a beautiful day.  No strange ladies were heckling me.  I had a whole system down so it wouldn't drag on the ground and get dusty.  Things were looking up! 


The pinning went well but, since the wool had more loft than I was used to, I pinned more closely than I usually do.  I was nose-to-nose with every square inch of that top, since I'd seen it all through the basting process (twice!).  I used literally every pin I have--right down to the very last one.  I folded the quilt with the unfastened pins and put it over the back of one of the dining room chairs.  That evening, I moved it to my sewing room.  The next day, I decided to get it out so I could start brainstorming quilting ideas. 


That's when I saw them.  Stains. Not just stains, but stains and pink blotches as if fabric had bled.  The stains were brown like coffee or mud.  The pink was in areas that had no red near them.  The backing wasn't red.  It wasn't coming through from the back.  All of the fabric had been prewashed.  The stains were in a weird pattern in the center quarter of the quilt.  Crap, crap, crap.


I had no interest in washing an unquilted top, let alone RE-BASTING THAT TOP FOR THE THIRD TIME.  I had to press on and hope I could get the stains and bleeding out.  I've had good luck with other quilts, using Synthrapol and HOT water, but there was no way I was washing the wool batt in hot water.  I had no idea whether I'd be able to get the stains out.  I had to press on rather than fall back.. 


I decided on a quilting design with swirls and stars.  I didn't want stars like you would draw as a child.  I wanted open stars.  I started drawing stars, realizing quickly how difficult that is.  It is silly but it isn't as easy as it looks.  Brady was laughing at my tortured looking slanted stars so I challenged him to try.  He was soon laughing even harder at his attempts.  I finally got to a point where I could do the stars pretty well although I was worried about all of the loft in that never-before-attempted wool batt that I'd just bought a CASE of.  Sigh.


By this point, my desire to be done with this quilt took over and I plowed through the quilting in three days. My goal was to keep the scale larger so it would be drape-able.  Things were going well.  The day that I finished the quilting, I saw that Leah Day had posted a YouTube video with her tips and tricks for binding.  I decided I'd try it her way.  Most of it was the way I've always done it but she had some great new tips that I applied.  I think they worked especially well to tame the loft at the edges (she often uses higher loft batting).
From the original vintage panels, all that remained was two border strips.  I decided to make a tote bag for the quilt using the strips as an accent.
I would say that the reaction to the quilt was subdued.  Maybe they'd just given up on ever getting it.  I'm glad to have it finished.  In the end, I learned a new quilting motif, became familiar with wool batting, improved my basting set up, and quilted the largest quilt I have finished in Arizona.  Lessons learned.
The quilt photo isn't so great but I didn't have the mental energy for much more once this was ready to be gifted. 







1 comment:

  1. This quilt is more than wonderful. I love the design of the top and of the quilting. It did all come together and will now be a bench mark for pain. Your pinning up at the guild made me think of the crap we took making that circle quilt for Candy. Miss you.

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