Flushed with the success of my very first "real" quilt, I developed a serious crush on quilting. I immediately rushed into buying quilting accessories, a new, somewhat intimidating sewing machine, adding quilting cottons to my stash and buying quilting magazines in a somewhat frenzied mania.
None of it was necessarily helpful, of course.
For my next project, I decided that I wanted to make a throw for the couch in "Shadys" (our finished basement "bar" which we call Shady's Let Down Lounge or "Shady's" for short.) The couch was pretty sad looking and I thought a cover for it would be a great idea.
I had been to a fabric sale at The Textile Museum and while there picked up a pre-printed fabric panel that was Southwest in theme. I decided to fussy cut the panel into two pillow sized squares, which I then made into pillow tops, and motif quilted the panels.
Because this was early in my quilting life and I was still learning about all kinds of things, now I would quilt those panels differently - probably doing outline quilting at the very least or trying some stippling or even channel quilting, but I was new to it all, and in retrospect, I realize now that I was more interested in producing finished products and trying out new stuff then in making the things well.
I needed a third cushion so I made one using my newly acquire software called "The Quilting Wizard". It was barely out of the packagaing before I knew that I wanted something with more bells and whistles, but I have nevethless used it to good effect since then,early on producing my first two projects, this pillow:
and the throw, below. On that pillow, I tried out some free-motion swirls as well as some barely discernible motif quilting on the little cacti, and finally, the above mentioned throw:
Although the cushions are in current use; sadly, this throw became my first UFO (unfinished object). I disliked it so very much when it was done that I stopped at about the 97% finished mark. The quilt itself I stiched i the ditch, but as I pinned the binding, I realzied, 'I hate this quilt".
Nearly a year later, I've learned enough to rescue it (I hope) and though that will be an upcoming project, it will never be one of my favourites. I learned so much with this quilt, not least that seemingly elusive lesson about accurate cutting and seaming, but also, translating patterns to reality, remembering to add a seam allowance when designing and accurate measuring of the object in question. (I'm smiling as I type that sentence.) Apparently, "guestimating" quilt sizes doesn't work.
Huh.
At any rate, the quilt was an excellent lesson, one that I may revist soon as I add a bigger border to the original, already quilted piece and regret past decisions as I do so!
Anonymous
There's something sort of charming about that quilt :)
ReplyDeleteWow! There's someone following along here? How cool! :D
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for saying so, but I'm having a hard time seeing it now! :)
I think I found your blog via Livejournal (I'm clumsy_chord over there) though I can't actually remember.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure what I do find charming about it because it's not in colours I particularly care for myself, but I don't know. It's maybe just sort of humanly flawed, if you know what I mean, in a way that makes it charming rather than one of those perfect show pieces that are amazing to look at but you wouldn't dare touch. I don't know.
Anyway, I've got projects I hate and can't stand to look at, so I do know the feeling.
:) I think I started following your blog a couple of weeks/perhaps a month ago, just having a look at a couple of posts and thinking it was interesting, and that I would check it out more thoroughly later.
ReplyDeleteI came back and started scrolling through the posts and realized..."Hey! I think this is clumsy_chord! And then I found your comment here. :)