I am not going to quilt this thing for tomorrow - I don't want to rush through it. I need to "live" with it a bit and figure out a quilting pattern that will enhance the design and not detract from it. It's a rather BUSY quilt (as many of my designs seem to be these days... what's up with that?).
And had I bothered to notice the patch count before I started, I don't think I would have done this at all. there are 677 individual pieces of fabric in this monstrosity. The smallest 9-patch in the quilt (there were 4 of these) had a finished size of 1 3/4 inches. yes, you read that right. And when you are working that small, you cannot be inaccurate with your measuring, cutting or sewing - at all.
Lessons learned: 1. when I am doing a crazy pieced block that has a lot of triangles in it and odd-angles, I need to paper piece. I lost a quarter to half an inch in the width of the triangle blocks by cutting and piecing rather than using foundation techniques.
2. After spending hours and hours wrestling with split rectangles, doing a straight nine-patch is an absolute joy.
The purple "background" fabric photographed really blue in the pictures, but it's a really dark blue-violet, more towards the violet side of the spectrum (at least to my eyes!).
I will be taking a little hiatus from my machine for a few days or maybe a week - I desperately need to clean my sewing room and organize my scraps. I think I'll get back to doll design and finish a knitting project. for a little while. I feel like I've run a marathon...
Till next time, keep on quilting!
WOW!! That is beautiful!! Yes, the purple does come out looking blue in the picture but its still stunning !!
ReplyDeleteabsolutely gorgeous! What a fantastic job!
ReplyDelete"Awesome" doesn't begin to cover it, and that's about where I run out of words.
ReplyDeleteThose itty bitty 9patches? Crazy. Adorable. Sweet!