More on the Joy of Quilting

Don't you just love how God sends us some beautiful flowers just when we think there won't be any more flowers until spring?  Goes to show what we know.  :)  What does this have to do with the joy of quilting?  Well just look at that and try not to smile, I dare you.

 And don't you just hate when you don't think to take a picture of flowers until it's dark?

 Following the rules from my last post I'm machine quilting a wall quilt for Christmas that grew from the 30" x 40" I had planned to 42" x 70" when I wasn't looking.  How in the world does that happen you ask?

Well I saw this Christmas Tree quilt on the internet...twice...in two different places.  Which meant it was like lightening struck.  I had to make it.  I had no pattern but how hard could it be?  It was all made of circles and I had a circle die for my Accuquilt Go!  I looked really hard at the ones I saw and they had 4 different sizes of circles.  My die had 3 sizes...about 2", 3", and 5".  So I looked around for something to make another size circle and found a saucer - 7 1/4"  This was my first "joy of quilting" moment with this quilt.  I should have looked for a smaller circle, like 1", but that just sounds so little.  First I ironed Steam a Seam 2 to the back of some red fabrics.  This step is important...don't wait until after you cut the circles unless you've got the fine motor dexterity of a monkey.  Trust me on that.  I counted all their circles and I cut out that number.  When I started pinning them to my design board I came up with this:

Great shape, right?  Right.  But that bottom row is about 2" from each side of the width of fabric for the background!  And height...it still needs a star and a pot...well lets just say it's going to be a little large for my front door, which is where I planned to hang it.

The next thing I had to do is to find a star for the top and a pot for the tree to sit in.  Well the pot wasn't hard.  I cut a square and then angled the sides.  Done!  But the star.  I searched my books for a star that was big enough and couldn't come up with one. "Joy of quilting number two" - I did find one I liked but it was too small.  Did I tell you I used to teach algebra?  Surely I could figure that out!  I dug out some graph paper and used the Pythagorean Theorem, a side-angle-side geometric rule, and Fibonacci numbers....just kidding ya'll.

I drew the small star on the graph paper, added an inch on all sides with my trusty ruler and yippee! a perfect size star to use as my template.  Again I say, iron your Steam a Seam 2 to the back of your fabric before you cut out your star.  You'll be sorry if you don't.  Really sorry.  That was my "joy of quilting" number three.

Okay, all right!  I have all my pieces pinned to the design board when I realize they have to be transferred to the background fabric.  This picture is after I did that but the moment when I realized that I didn't put the background fabric up first was my "joy of quilting" moment number four.  I spent a good half hour arranging all those and I knew there was no way to replicate it when I moved them.  I took a picture on my IPad and tried to do it from there but the patterns of all those fabrics didn't show up very good so I just crossed my fingers and moved them.  And moved them.  And moved them.  Finally I had them arranged where I wanted them and I moved to the ironing board to press them on.

This step went beautifully except for the "joy of quilting" moment number five when I forgot to press and ironed instead.  A couple of the circles didn't appreciate that enthusiasm and curled their edges on me.  Nasty.  But all in all that went rather quickly and I proceeded to sandwiching.  We won't talk about that because I can't count that high.  But finally we made it to the machine.

How in the world do you manage all that quilt!  It just wads up all around.  I've tried rolling but I'm not too good at rolling.  One time I remember some friends and I tried rolling a boy's yard but we got caught.  Maybe I'm intimidated by the whole idea of it.  Scarred by the memory, if you will.

I decided to stipple.  I love stippling.  And no, the fact that it's the only free motion quilting I can do had no impact on my decision.

I've stippled for five hours and I'm half way through.  I don't like stippling nearly as much as I used to.  I'll be back later to show you the finished product.  Maybe 2012.  or 13.