Catching up - Part 2 - Quilting

After recovering over night about my failure to make my paper-pieced quilt the right size for our pushed-together twin beds (http://rsroesner.blogspot.com/2007/07/amazing-i-finished-two-projects.html), I decided to start again. I thought about doing another paper-pieced one, but the thought of ripping off all that paper as I finished it just didn't appeal to me this time. I have a book by Evelyn Sloppy called Strips & Strings, so I decided to pick something from that and try my hand at something that didn't give me that safety net of having exact-sized papers to assure the sizes and shapes of my blocks. I chose her Elegance of Red pattern, although I think I'll call mine just Elegance - or maybe Elegance of Gold. The red just don't quite happen - nor did I intend it to.

Our bedroom walls are golden, and our complementary colors tend to be beige and maroon, with walnut-shades of wood. (These pictures are taken in the family room, which is a room devoid of much natural light, requiring the use of my flash. I think I'm going to have to start using a tripod for most pictures that aren't outdoors because my hand isn't as steady as it once was.) In these pictures, I laid the border on the edge of the folded top so that I could measure the amount I needed.

I'm going to patch together yardages of a couple of the golds, a green, and black to make the backing, I'll use black for the binding, and I'll use a thin cotton batting for the batting. I'm planning to quilt each of the large gold squares in some kind of large flower - probably with some colored threads, and then do each of the stripped sections in some free-style scroll or leaf pattern. I'll either use echo or meandering for fill. We'll see how that works out.

So far, I've spent the better part of two weeks making this top. There's a lot of cutting and sewing involved to make all those strips. Evelyn Sloppy's pattern calls for strips from 1 to 2-1/2 inches, but I think my widest strip is 2 inches. I liked the narrower strip better as I was sewing the strips together.

So far, I really like the looks of this quilt, and I think it will really brighten our room and make it more alive. Before I put the layers together for this quilt, I'll be absolutely sure it's the right size. If I need to make it larger, now is the time to increase the border - not after I have it all done. Making a quilt over a period of four years isn't the way to do it. My attention will be on this one until I have it done - hopefully by the end of the month. The next slow thing will be doing the machine quilting, but I'll just take it slow and steady and get it done.

Things I learned with this quilt (some things about quilting, and some not):

• I can sew strips together and expect to have a reasonable straight line of strips when I'm done. Wow! I didn't have any confidence that I could pull that off.


• When I sew the strips together and create a block, I can use a square template and cut all the blocks to the right size. This technique is in Evelyn Sloppy's book. These blocks happen to be 12-1/2 inches each, so I used one of my Michael's 40% off coupons and bought myself a 12-1/2 inch quilter's square. I had never used one before. Quilting is really a new endeavor for me.


• Audio books are excellent companions when you're doing something repetitious with your hands that doesn't require a lot of thinking. This isn't true when you're in the design phase, but for the rote work, audio is perfect! While sewing the strips together, I listened to Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, available on iTunes as a free subscription, and Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish which I got from the library. They were both really great. I also found some Lutheran Church Missouri Synod podcasts on iTunes and really enjoyed listening to Issues, Etc - Sunday.


• A portable, personal video player is also a good sewing companion. I set my player in front of me on my sewing desk, plugged in my earphones, so I could hear, and watched Hotel Rwanda. What a story, and what a well-made movie! Watching that story, of course, meant I had to go to the Internet to do a little research about it. Since it's a DVD that we own, I will watch it again, I'm sure. I have several DVDs that I haven't watched. Shrek 2 was one of those, but while I was cutting strips, I plugged my video player into the TV and watched that. I like Shrek. I'll have to get Shrek 3 now.


• I can sew for four to six hours at a time, then I have to break. The work isn't tedious to me. I found that I've finally slipped back into focus on my personal projects, the same kind of focus I had when I was working. What a relief. I didn't know if I was going to be able to do that or not.


• The jacuzzi pounding on my shoulders and back sure relieve that physical tension I build up while I'm in the zone, and it also cools me down so I can get in that hot car and go shopping for more plants, things for the box for Donna and her family, groceries, or whatever. Then I can sew again later - unless I decide I want to knit instead!

I'm sure I learned tons more - life is full of lessons, and it's good to be alive to learn them.

Retirement is good!