Revisiting & Celebrating

Over the last few weeks I’ve worked on piecing a quilt top that has a tight turn-around time, and needs to be done well as it’s a magazine quilt. It is exactly the quilt I wanted to make, and it’s not exactly the quilt I wanted to make. And I can’t show you yet, I appreciate your patience.

While designing I had a particular company’s fabric line in mind, and as sometimes happens the fabric didn’t arrive, so queue alternate plans. Newly chosen fabric arrives, and gets packed for a road trip. Yahoo! The process of making the quilt has included the seam ripper, re-cutting a couple of times, and making a block I’ve never made before. You might be surprised that after nearly 26 years of quilt making I’d never made a Monkey Wrench, while I like the block, for some reason I find the piecing of this one annoying. Don’t hate me for this as it’s the block that’s been the most annoying. Anyway, I’m down to the final three blocks and will have it pieced by the end of the week. Then let the quilting begin. I have thoughts on this, but nothing concrete. I may need to go shopping for some FabuLux by Debby Brown. Hmm, I wonder where I can get some and…I’m going to be in her neighborhood later this week.

So the revisiting part of this, in case you might be wondering where the heck I was going with this, is that each one of the blocks is a basic block ranging from a 4-patch, and friendship star, to a Monkey Wrench and nine patch chain. These are all blocks I haven’t made in years, or ever in the case of the Monkey Wrench. Revisiting basics, beginner type projects is a great thing to do now and then for so many reasons. The most important, in my opinion, is to see, for ourselves, how we’ve honed our skills and can still work on improving them. In the case of the Monkey Wrench it’s a matter of knowing I’d make a choice to cut the pieces for the block differently than is suggested in EQ to be able to work with a little less exposed bias. And it’s also reminding me why I generally work slowly, deliberately through a quilt project, so that I’m doing my best work in this moment. And sometimes even when I’m doing my best work things don’t always go as planned. Hence the re-cutting and getting the seam ripper out.

One of the things I do very differently now is use fine thread in my seams, moving from 50 weight cotton to 80 weight cotton, 60 weight poly, a finer thread and a microtex needle. I know the thread isn’t going to take any room in the seam allowance giving me a better shot at my blocks being the size I want them to be. Oh, and my rulers and cutting mat are Quilters Select by Alex Anderson, the line on the mat and rulers are the same! What a tremendous difference this makes.

Today is the last day to enter for a chance to win and e-book copy of Erin Hentzel’s new book Me & My 18” Doll. Click on the link, answer the question and I’m drawing tomorrow and will post on Wednesday.

Today is my birthday, and I’m going to do a give away in celebration of the day. Due to postage constraints US only (sorry friends!! – next year I’ll be giving e-books of my very own title sooo hang with me here) it’ll be a tower of ten fat quarters, though at the moment I don’t know exactly which ones I’m going to give away. Simply tell me your best birthday ever by next Monday November 25th. I’ll draw, and announce next Tuesday.

Thank you for reading my blog and sharing in my experiences of quilt making! You are so treasured.

Happy Quilting,

Teri