This is the almost-halfway-finished Schnibble that I'm working on... the Schnibble is Houseboat, and I am attempting to make it out of Boutique by Chez Moi for Moda. (The black thing underneath is a piece of plastic that these have been resting on -- they are all ironed and ready for another round for the sewing machine, so I didn't want to mess them up too much.)
The second WIP has a bit of a story behind it. See, I bought the fabric to make this quilt in 2004 -- yes, this has been quite the ongoing project. Around that time, I got as far as cutting the fabric into strips, sewing them together, and then cutting about half of the pieced strips. I had planned on doing a very simple quilt with 5 inch (finished) squares, in a downward diagonal.
The fabrics consist of prints of: construction scenes, power tools, police cars, fire engines, trains, and yellow construction vehicles (like backhoes and bulldozers). I have no idea who any of the designers are/were. I might try to find some tractors for the border. This quilt is PERFECT for its recipient. I have nicknamed it The Testosterone Quilt.
Well, whatever I was using as my instruction manual didn't mention that part about making sure that your fabric is square. Between that, my nonexistent quarter inch seam (I tried, I really did!) and my uber-beginner-ness, I have some of the most bizarre 5.5 inch squares that you have ever seen. They look like they were cut with one of the tools in the quilt. I have been putting off finishing this because I will have to figure out a way around all of the craziness. Starting over is not an option, because I don't think that I could find a better group of fabrics for the recipient, and I think only one of these fabrics is still being made.
When I have thought about tackling this monstrosity over the past few weeks, I could only think of two options -- either take the strips apart and try to sew them together a little bit better, or take the strips apart, cut them into 4.5 inch blocks and sew each block together individually.
I showed my mom an example of the problem and asked her what she thought I should do. She looked at me like I was completely out of my mind (I get this look a lot though). "So the seams don't match up perfectly -- HE WILL NEVER NOTICE. He just wants his quilt." Letting the quilt go with less than perfect squares with less than perfect quarter inch seams didn't even OCCUR to me. At all. But the more I thought about it, the more I think my mom is right, and that my dad would be upset if I wasted all that fabric and time.
The photo above is of two rolls of two columns each. I have a third group, so that is six finished columns altogether. I think there will be four more, but those four are going to take a lot more work than these did. My goal is to finish the entire quilt top by the end of April. This sounds reasonable enough, considering that I have no job and there is no employment in sight. But sewing these together... there is only so much I can handle at one time, so we will see what happens.
Oh -- and the (eventual) recipient of The Testosterone Quilt?
My dad!
No comments:
Post a Comment