Glutton for Punishment (Part 2: The Epic Conclusion!)

When I last left off, my poor unfinished quilt was quietly folded aside and quickly forgotten as Spring finally rounded the corner in Seattle. Happily, eventually I got up off my lazy ass and started working on the quilt again. It was about the same time that I was making plans to move in with Jack, I realized that I still had my co-worker's sewing machine and perhaps it would be a tad gauche if I end up taking it with me to Anacortes. For one thing, it would make returning the machine infinitely more difficult. So I started working again, hoping that I would be able to finish by the time I moved.

I worked in fits and starts. One weekend I managed to finally piece together what would be the back of the quilt. But then the next step was to baste the quilt, which is sandwiching the face, the batting, and the back together and loosely sewing it together so that it wouldn't move while I quilted the thing together. Faced with a seemingly mountainous job ahead of me, I once again folded the quilt and put it away.

In another weekend, particularly rejuvenated after brunch with my friends at Toulouse Petit, I started working on basting the quilt. The only good thing about basting was that it is sewed together VERY LOOSELY.  The bad thing about basting was that I did it all by hand while watching Azumanga Daioh, in the original Japanese with English subtitles. Considering that I don't speak a lick of Japanese, the subtitles were necessary for my understanding their hilarious shenanigans. I found that I could focus on only one thing: either I work on sewing or I watch the cartoon. Eventually I decided that the quilt was basted enough (I sewed it down the middle horizontally and vertically and then diagonally twice making an X), taped the rest of the quilt down with blue tape, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching cartoons. And so it was until it came time to move.

I had a week in between my last day of the work and when I had to move. I thought I would have all the time in the world to slowly pack, run some errands, take it easy, and maybe work on my quilt. Boy, was I mostly wrong. Aside from deciding that taking the bus/light rail was too expensive and walking to places instead, I also tried to cram in as many happy hours as humanly possible. There were lunches with old co-workers; then my dentist found a pocket (a pocket!) of bacteria that may spell bad news down the line, and especially since I was giving up insurance for the foreseeable future, she suggested I get a few visits in to thoroughly clean the area, so I had three more dentist appointments scheduled; and the one day I spent shopping for and wrapping potstickers for dinner for my friends. There wasn't a lot of time to pack or to work on my quilt. However, I did find one afternoon to work on it, and I managed to finally quilt (as in officially sewing it all together) my first line. But, the apartment was such a mess, and quilting required so much space (since the whole thing was basted together), that I eventually packed it all away.

Long story: No, I did not finish my quilt before I moved to Anacortes.

However! Now that I was in Anacortes, I did managed to finish it sometime in the first month that I moved in. Partially because, finally, there was nothing to distract me, there was a ton of space (none of Jack's furniture had arrived yet), and there was nothing to do in Anacortes.

Check out the quilt in action! Draped on the couch!

I ended up spending about two days just quilting it together. The problem I had was the excess fabric that I needed to support while I quilted. Occasionally one of the blanket that I wasn't working on quilting would slowly slide off the table and then it would screw up the straight line I was sewing on--and, yes, it led to tiny little bunches which drive me slightly crazy, but not so crazy that I would want to fix it.

Another issue I had was cutting off the excess batting and backing fabric. I mentioned that my fabric cutting board was only 18x24, but now I had to cut excess fabric off something that was now about a twin sized blanket...and the living room floor was carpeted. So I had to wrangle the fabric, cutting every two feet or so, hoping that it would come out straight, and worrying that if I accidentally cut off the board, I would take a bit of carpet fuzz with it. But I finished anyways and now the only thing left was to sew on the border and I'd be finished!!

The border was the final bit of pain for me, because, as it turns out, I didn't cut the quilt out exactly straight. So where the border met the not so straightened edge of the quilt, it ended up bunching together. But, at this point I didn't care. It was completed....mostly. Some of the quilt came undone at the border about a week later (again with the not straight edges, it didn't quite meet with the border the first time around to get sewn together) and I had to fix it together.

It seems to have held up quite well now I've finished it. I've spilled juice on it and it has gone through two regular wash and dry cycles without looking worse for wear.  I've grown to love it and all it's small imperfections--although I'm not sure I want to attempt a second quilt, just to build on what I've learned the last time around. Anyways, let this be a lesson to you all--making a quilt is not for the weekend warrior, but it is pretty awesome once it's finished and your hate for the process has subsided.

Glutton for punishment (Part 1)

I was moving at the time, so my apartment was messy. I don't normally live in squalor or with bad lighting.

The other day I was reading Apartment Therapy and they had a post on crocheted granny squares. Between the lure of another comfortable blanket for myself and a seemingly fun project to while away the cold days of February, I briefly toyed with the idea of making my own granny square blanket. Then I remembered that this same siren song of DIY occured to me about the same time last year too when I decided that I could and should make a quilt. This week, I am going to share a story about my adventures in sewing a quilt. It's quite exciting for you, I'm sure--so exciting that I am splitting this story in two, the first part today (with a cliffhanger!) and finishing next week. Onto my personal quilting hell!

I have a tendency to fall in love with things very quickly and very often--puppies, pretty flower arrangements, and DIY projects--and once it clicks in my mind that I love it, I absolutely must have it/get it/do it. Well, sometime in January last year, I got the brilliant (BRILLIANT) idea to make a quilt after reading a post on Boing Boing about Boo Davis' quilting book (I think). I figured my sewing skills were decent enough that if I found a simple pattern, executing and putting together the quilt would be a fairly painless process. I was wrong. (SO WRONG)

I checked out Boo Davis' Dare to be Square quilting book from the library and looked for interesting patterns. I eventually settled on her Chatterbox pattern, which was an easy four block pattern that was just pieced together until it was big enough for a blanket. One interesting thing in her book was that she said making quilts were not for weekend warriors; quilts take time and you should take your time piecing it together. At the time, I was like: Okay, whatever.

Gathering the fabric took a while, but my spirits were high. Then came the cutting of all the squares. Holy crap. This was when the resentment began to set in--the whole patterned called for over 100 pieces of various fabric sizes for just the "face" of the quilt (not counting many pieces I cut out incorrectly), more smaller rectangles to make the border, and cutting three large unwieldy pieces to make the back of the quilt.

The general pattern in the book was to start with two pieces, block them together, do the same with another two pieces, and then sew the two blocks together to make a four square. Continue doing that until you have all the four squares in that row blocked together, then you sew the four blocks together until you have a complete row. Repeat. Once all the rows have been completed, sew all the rows together until the whole thing is pieced together. Sewing the fabric together initially wasn't so bad until I started blocking off the larger pieces. Things started to get real hairy because it just got kind of heavy, I didn't know quite where to drape the fabric to line it up for the machine, and all the pins. Oh god, the pins. I was stabbed so many times handling the fabric.

At this point it was...March, I think? I was pretty miserable because I had spent quite a bit of my free time (when not on the couch surfing the interwebs or eating or working or going to Kate's) on the quilt and all I had to show for it, a month plus into the project, were just blocked off rows. Plus, the damn quilt started to take over the living room; it was a project just setting up to begin to sew the blocks and then cleaning up.There was the sewing machine, the ironing board, getting the iron, laying out all the pieces in the order I wanted them. Then to pin them together, sew, press open, sew some more and repeat.

I was not even close to being able to put the layers together to baste the blanket because I hadn't cut the large unwieldy pieces for the back. The reason was that my little cutting board was only 18x24 inches and so cutting fabric pieces larger than that required some fabric wrangling which usually resulted crooked lines and shaving off tiny pieces of our area rug.

So, once I finished sewing together the face of the quilt, I folded it up and put it away. I patted myself on the back for a job well done and rewarded myself with a small quilt vacation thinking that I'd work on the piece for the back next week. Then, work got a bit stressful and more than a few weeks went by without working on the quilt. Suddenly it was April and the weather got nicer and I wasn't nearly so inclined to stay at home. So the quilt stayed folded up and neglected while I caroused around Seattle greeting the spring.

By now, you are probably on the edge of your seat wondering what happens to my project. Will it get finished? Does it rot away in quilt purgatory forever? Partially finished but never quilted together? Find out next week! Unless you've visited me in the last half of 2011, then you already know the answers.