Progress?

May 5, 2013

Dear friends,

It’s been two steps forward, one step backward on the quilting front.

I spent part of yesterday trying to muster a head of steam on quilt-blocking and . . . whew! It took me much of the day to construct what you see in the photo above.

The problem is that the last time I worked on this project — when I finally, mercifully made a proper quilt block that looked like my inspiration photo — it was more than two weeks ago. And for reasons I can’t explain, I didn’t make a pattern. After spending an entire day getting the block just right, I thought I had it in my head.

Yeah . . . not so much. Today, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the angle I had cut my blocks on. So I had to do what every seamstress hates to do: deconstruct a block and start all over. It should probably go without saying, but this time I wrote down every dimension. (Eureka!)

There’s one thing I know for sure: I will never again attempt to make a quilt based solely on a photo. No pattern, no instructions? No quilt.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll get this done by the time Kate leaves for college in August.  She’s moving from a twin-sized bed to a full-sized bed and that’s been the impetus for this project. In the mean time, I watched a video tutorial for a super-simple and lovely quilt pattern called the disappearing 9-block and I can’t wait to get started on that one.

Right after I conquer the quilt that Joan conjured from thin air, where air equals Pinterest, which ought to be banned before it kills innocent, amateur crafters.

With gratitude {for pen and paper, on which I have written down the instructions for this quilt block, lest my feeble mind fails me again},

Joan, whose best advise for aspiring quilters is “Be thou not so stupid.”

No experience necessary. Unless you want to finish.

Apr 15, 2013

Dear friends,

I’m not sure why I thought with no instructions and no experience whatsoever I could become a quilter overnight.

I’m one of those people who is blessed with confidence. I’m convinced I could have been an architect or a filmmaker or a novelist (to name but three professions I believe I’m suited for) if only I had tried. That I ended up in my current (unnamed) profession that’s really nothing like those I just named has more to do with the vagaries of decisions made in my 20s than talent. Or that’s the story I tell myself. Still, I’m smart enough to know that if I woke up tomorrow and decided to actually become an architect, I would need education and training.

So nothing explains why I saw this quilt on the internet  and — even though the pattern isn’t identified and I’m breathtakingly inexperienced at this sort of thing — went to bed Saturday night thinking I was going to wake up Sunday morning and make my own pattern and construct myself a quilt. Forget the fact that I’ve never taken a class on quilting, nor read an instruction booklet, nor even watched a video tutorial.  “I can wing it,” I thought.

The thing about winging it is that it’s not the fastest way from point A to point B, usually.

Try not to laugh out loud, but it took me about four hours to produce that single quilt block shown in the photo. Actually, I LAUGHED out loud as I typed that last sentence. Because if you look at the picture, it looks so simple, right? It’s eight little pieces of fabric, for Pete’s sake, and there’s not even any weird curves or points.

I thought about the quilt quite a bit as I fell asleep the night before. I had it figured out in my head, or so I thought.

Turns out, figuring it out in real life is very different than in your head.

I did everything wrong. I measured wrong, I cut the fabric wrong, I stitched the wrong sides together, I pieced it wrong, and I even ironed it wrong. (Who knew there was a right way to iron until I took a break and watched a couple of online tutorials for simpler patterns?)

And in the middle of stitching all those wrong pieces, I even threaded my bobbin wrong (because I ran out of thread and it’s a new machine and, of course, I didn’t read the instruction booklet on how to wind my bobbin).

The upside to making every mistake possible is that you eventually stumble on to doing it the right way. (The ol’ blind squirrel theory applies to crafting, I suppose.)

Anyway, now . . . now I think I’ve got it! The finished block is 1″ smaller than I imagined, but who cares? It’s not like I’m following a pattern.

I’m hoping that next weekend I can make several blocks. I need 42 to make a full-size quilt, which is the size I’m going for unless continued extemporaneous stitchery leads me elsewhere.

With gratitude {for improvisation skills learned in high school speech and drama},

Joan, who in the interest of full disclosure wants you to know she intends to make a quilt top, which she’ll ship off to somebody else for the actual act of quilting, an activity she has no desire to master anytime soon