Last things before Thanksgiving (latest quilt)

Lauren picked up our turkey dinner - yes, we again purchased the basics, ready to heat, from Stater's. We usually pick it up the evening before, to allow time for thawing (yes, it's partially frozen) before putting everything in the oven; but Lauren did it all on his own this time, and he decided Thanksgiving morning would be early enough. He was right. The turkey is in the oven now, heating for about three hours. The dinner came with mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry relish (not as good as Lauren's, but good, nevertheless), rolls, and stuffing. We'll add some green beans almondine (with some sweet onions mixed in), some fresh pineapple, and a few snack-type things, and that will do it.


I finished piecing the quilt top yesterday morning, except for the corner triangles and the borders, and Lauren sketched out some ellipses for me, using the back of some Christmas wrapping paper.

As a result of meeting my goal to have this main part of the top completed, my sewing room is now organized and much less cluttered, my project is at a stage where I won't be totally confused when I pick it up again, and much of the dust of sewing is now nicely tucked inside the vacuum cleaner bag. Excellent!

The quilt background (the entire top) is really busy, so I'll have to experiment with various colors to see what makes the ellipses show up best. Hopefully I can make that decision next week while I'm thinking about what to pack for our December trip. In my imagination, my first choice is to use the gold fabric, but I never can never really see what the impact is until I actually get the fabrics together. Adding pieces for the planets will change the appearance, too. I have some of those narrow pressing bars I can use to help me make bias strips that are about 1/4 inch wide.

I'm thinking of sprinkling some other elements around, too, to balance out the big picture. Maybe some additional planets of various colors will do it. These are certainly uncharted waters for me. I have construction paper around somewhere. I'll keep an eye out for it the next couple days and then start cutting out experimental shapes Saturday.

I never thought I would be able to learn to do this kind of sewing. I've never been exact enough; but I find with practice, it's coming to me little by little. I learned (or relearned) some additional things with this quilt, and I'm sure I'll learn more.

- Evelyn Sloppy, in her book Strips and Strings, made strips and then cut them to the right size using a quilter's template. I can truly appreciate the why of that method now. With all these strips, it's nearly impossible to make sure all the edges are the same length. The width is another problem. Each seam takes up its own space. That 1/4" rule is so very, very important.
- Although you can warp fabric during pressing, you can also fix potential problems when pressing. If the strip seams make a block too narrow, for example, I found I could carefully press the seam flat and "block" the block to size.
- If I'm making strips that have an organized pattern (not random), I have to remember that it's important that I lay the strips in correctly. I really confused myself when I saw the gold stripes going in all directions. I ended up ripping out several blocks, turning them around, and repeating this mantra "gold left, gold top, gold left, gold top."
- Sashing between blocks helps minimize the corner mismatch error that's so easy to make. Most of my corners are pretty close, if not right on the mark; but I kept thinking that this would have been easier had I inserted a sashing between the blocks.
- Thinking a design on paper is pleasing doesn't mean that the design in fabric will be as pleasing. The layout of these blocks isn't the same as the layout I created in EQ5. In my EQ5 design, I alternated between the 9-patch and the strip blocks, but I wasn't pleased with it at all when I laid the fabric blocks out in that configuration. I'm much more pleased with this arrangement, where all the strip blocks are grouped in the middle of the quilt.
- When a quilt is so busy as this one, having a few plain blocks settles it down. The idea for this quilt was to create a feeling of being in a forest at night, seeing the sky and feeling the mystery; but it was such a jumbled night sky that the feeling was one more of chaos than mystery. The solid green blocks helped center the focus.

If one of the ideas behind all this is to help keep my mind elastic (and it is), then it's succeeding. I'm having to think about things in a way I haven't thought for a long time.