So the other day I was back in my sewing room working on a new project (I can't work on just one project at a time.), my first attempt at designing my own quilt. I design the old fashion way, with graph paper, so it takes awhile. I'd love to own some drafting software. There's one on the market that is so cool. Not only can you do all the drafting of the blocks, but it also has fabric swatches direct from the manufacturers. This is great. Think of it - when you color your blocks in you can use
actual fabric designs to color with. You can really see what your quilt might look like, not just it's colorway. Fantastic! However, I do not own such marvelous software, or any drafting software, so paper and pencils it is. I do have fantastic colored pencils though and my ever present Crayolas. I feel like a kid again when I sit down to draft. All those colored pencils and my 64 colors. Which color do I chose? Burnt Sienna? I've always loved that name. I don't know why. I don't particularly love the color burnt sienna, but oh it sounds so sweet. Or maybe Pine Tree? Brings you right back to your childhood doesn't it? I hope little kids today get to play with crayons. I just can't wrap my head around a small child running to his mom holding up his iPad (I'm sure there should be a trademark there or something. Imagine it. I can't find that on my word processor program.) and saying, "Mommy, look what I drew!" I'm shaking my head as I type. It's just not the same thing.
I digress. I
was in my
sewing room preparing a project. Got it all down on paper. This took a few days, people. The idea doesn't always come out on paper the way I think it should look. It has to be tweaked. That means redrawing and then recoloring. If I'm lucky it's just a small portion and I used pencil that could be erased. Along with drawing out the design to scale, I had to figure out how much fabric I needed to make the quilt. Luckily I
do have a handy-dandy fabric-calculator that helps me figure that out or I might still be sitting there. After all of that, I get to the really fun part, shopping in my stash. All fabric shopping has to start there. Found most of what I wanted, but then I discovered I really needed a different batik that I didn't have. Oh darn - off to the fabric store!
The fabrics are selected and ironed. This is going to be a wall hanging so I didn't prewash the fabrics. This being my own design, I had to figure out the best way to cut the fabrics. This doesn't sound that hard and I could cut each individual square, but that would really take forever. I prefer to use my rotary cutter and use strips when I can. This design is conducive to that, it's all 2" squares and 2" half-square triangles. I was using a special way of cutting squares to get the triangles. So off I go, cut 2 1/2" strips, cut 2" squares, for the triangles, stack squares, sew across diagonally, then cut in half and viola! you have 2 triangles. BUT, they weren't 2" square, they were smaller.
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It took me a whole stack of doing this, before I figured out that I needed those squares to be larger. The ones that would become triangles needed to be 2 7/8" squares. I just know this. NOT! I looked it up, that's why I own a whole library of quilting books. You'd think I would look at them before I cut into the fabric but, no, I don't apparently work that way. I am lucky in that I never buy just the amount of fabric I need for a project, I get a little bit more, so I had enough to redo all the triangles.
Time was lost, sigh, but the project is still going to be able to get done. I'll show you pictures when I get there. I'm still working on the wedding quilt. A lot is getting done because I'm watching the Tour de France (big fan!), so I sit and sew while I watch. Even watching TV can SA(y) Quilts!
