Not kidding.

This picture was November 2010:

Mind you, I did all the squares in about a month. Set everything aside for several years, put all the squares together in about a month. Set it aside for awhile. Did the backing and quilting two years ago, then waiting another two years (until today) before I finally bound the thing.

It wasn’t hard, it just took stretches of time where I wasn’t struggling mentally, and didn’t have anything else happening, and that was a bit of a rarity.

So unlikely to take on another quilt, but may well make clothes again (assuming I can find patterns and fabric).

Today I (hopefully) finished up the green squares.

I might have been able to start on the purple, except that I ended up repeatedly ripping out seams because the tension was screwed up. (This was not actually my fault: I played with the tension, stitch length, changed the material, changed the bobbin, and then finally discovered the thread was miswound and that was screwing up the tension. BAH.

But, it’s the process, and with that in mind I didn’t get frustrated. (YAY ME!)

Here’s the process so far:
(more…)

I made lots of mistakes today (as you can see by the top block in the picture below), but I was expecting to make mistakes, and it was nothing serious, so I didn’t worry about it. I worked just with the green, since that’s the color that’s going on the edge of the quilt (best to have the biggest mistakes along the edges, rather than the center of the quilt).

Here’s the end of the day progress:

I made a Flickr set so progress can be tracked in one place.

Today I spent time creating my design and ordering the blocks.

I found a design I thought would be a nice one to start with in one of the quilting magazines I found, but I wanted to modify it some, so I started playing around on Excel, and came up with someone quite different from what It thought it was going to be. But that’s good, because I like this a lot better.

Then Michael helped me figure out the math: how wide to cut my strips, how big the resulting blocks will be (taking 1/4 inch seams into account) and how many blocks make what sized quilt, and then rearranging the design once again to work better with the final quilt size I wanted.

It is completely out of character for me to plan this much ahead of time for ANYTHING, but I want to do it right, and figuring everything out was kinda fun actually.

Since I want to work with gradients, I also organized the fabric into lights, darks, and mid-colors. You can see a hint of the pattern I came up with on the screen of my laptop. (Let me tell you, for something like this, the format painter is TOTALLY your best friend.)

And that’s where we are this evening. Depending upon how things go, perhaps tomorrow I’ll start cutting strips.

My fabric came today! Since it’s my first “real” quilt (I’ve done patch quilts before, but those were easy) I chose my favorite colors.

See! So pretty!

Since I don’t feel like showing pictures of the empty recycling bins or the space where there were piles of crap earlier today or even the space I cleaned up and then set up for my sewing machine, you get 1/3rd of today’s project–elastic on my pj bottoms. I really really hate it when my calves are exposed when I’m sleeping.

Perhaps something interesting tomorrow.

I’ve been whining for the past couple days on Twitter about wanting to know if dressmaking is easier or harder than quilting.

The reason I ask is because I am comfortable as a seamstress, and so don’t want to take on a project that is going to bore me.

I finally used my new machine today (new being a relative term, but then I haven’t sewn since 6 months before Grandmom moved to Morgantown, so it’s been awhile), and after initial battles that resulting in (GASP) reading the instructions, everything seems to be working well. Not thrilled with the low/slow power, but as it was a gift, can’t complain too much, can I?

Click through for two outfits I’ve made; these were probably my two most complex projects:
(more…)