I have been known to be overly optimistic in my time management.
Just a teensy, weensy, itsy, bitsy, bit.
OK. Massively overly optimistic.
I also tend to tire of the projects I’m working on and pick up different ones. And sometimes I decide to try a new skill.
Quilting was, once upon a time, an art form I thought I might like to dabble in.
So I decided to make what is called among quilters (you know, those people who actually know what they’re doing when they sew stuff together and make a fabric sandwich out of it) a “pieced top” quilt.
Not only did I decide that my very first quilt ever would involve a lot of cutting out little bits of fabric and sewing them together in cool patterns, I was determined to make a “scrap quilt”. That’s another one of those technical quilting terms that means that you are repurposing old clothes and other fabric items that have outlived their usefulness and turning them into a bedspread. Think of it as the original “upcycling”.
Only here’s the thing about “scrap quilts”. They are almost always “crazy quilts”. They derive this name from the fact that the pieces of fabric are completely random in size and shape and sewn together with no discernible pattern.
There’s a reason for that.
An important reason.
Scraps of material from lots of different sources also, it turns out, have different weaves, textures, fabric weights, drape and a lot of other fancy fabric terms. What that boils down to is that each of these fabrics behaves differently when you cut it up. (Especially if you are just cutting them in whatever direction gives you the most triangles per piece of fabric – apparently “cutting on the bias” is different than other kinds of cutting. Who knew?)
They also behave quite inconsistently when you sew them all together. And, if that weren’t enough of a problem, it turns out you are supposed to use a template and be super duper extra careful that every triangle is exactly precisely completely the same dimensions.
My attention span didn’t really allow for all that precision.
So, my pinwheel quilt, instead of turning out as a nice rectangle quilt, was more of a trapezoid.
A pretty trapezoid.
A warm trapezoid.
But still, a trapezoid.
Which is why I never made another pieced top quilt.
Instead I got the ingenious inspiration to make a quilt out of a single top piece, batting, and a single bottom piece.
And, since I was still fond of repurposing things, I chose to use an old white damask tablecloth and a green bed sheet.
To keep from having to dream up a pattern for the stitches I decided to follow the existing pattern on the tablecloth. It turns out this is NOT such a brilliant idea. The pattern is almost impossible to see unless you have just the right kind of lighting and the proper angle of the material.
And, unlike the piece-topped quilt that involved a lot of use of my grandmother’s featherweight Singer sewing machine, this quilting would all have to be done by hand.
In a fit of terrific optimism I began this quilt as a present for my then three year old daughter.
You can see where this is going.
I think I thought I’d have it finished by the time she was six. Or maybe eight.
Then I just hoped I could get it done before she left for college.
This spring she will turn twenty-one.
Drumroll please.......
I FINALLY was able to present her with the truly completed quilt this Christmas!
Just a few years late......
Here are the results:
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