Can you believe it? This quilt has now officially been four years in the making. I got the first delivery in June of 2016. As I suspected when I started it back then, although I definitely hoped for better, it wasn’t going to get done by that first October.
After spending a significant amount of time today cleaning out my bedroom closet, relegating clothes I’m unlikely to need in this pandemic situation to the unused closet in my daughter’s room (I’m not doing much in person in the next several months so dress clothes are tops only), moving summer-colored clothes out and moving my cold-weather clothes in (although we’ll still have warm weather, I do a lot of layering so my fall wardrobe will do double-duty), and generally re-organizing and cleaning things up…I rewarded myself with some time in my sewing room.
It actually took me almost an hour to sort this BOTM out, put all the parts in order, and read through the piecing directions to make sure I understood everything. Then I tackled the first couple of blocks.
It’s very easy piecing, as you can tell. The tricky thing is that I’m cutting the pieces for each block individually and, as we always say, “random is hard.” It’s going to just keep getting harder, too, as I get into lower rows and am trying to make sure I don’t have the same fabric in any of the connecting pieces. So it’s pokey, but not difficult.
It is, however, fun to finally see how it all comes together.
I clearly got lazy partway through the embroidery. The first few blocks I’d carefully pressed and gotten the marks out as soon as I finished them and before putting them away in the project bin. Not so much everything after about block four. When I got done with what I wanted to sew today, I took out the next few blocks and hit them with a spray bottle of water to get rid of the water soluble pen. It may be too late for some of the darker marks at corners, but I have hopes. The water will also help with remaining embroidery hoop creases. Fortunately, I’m cutting them all down small enough that I’ll likely be cutting out all of the hoop marks.
So stay tuned…
And by the way, since one of y’all talked me into it, I did buy a couple of Angela Walters’ Creative Grids Machine Quilting Tools. I looked on her blog and she very helpfully listed which she used the most, so I only bought two of her go-to’s, “Slim” and “Elvira.”
I’m still uncertain I’m going to be able to manage these. I’ll keep you posted once I get to the point of experimenting with them.
Tomorrow is supposed to be mostly rain, so I’m predicting some more sewing time in my future!