Thursday, April 26, 2012

Beating the Quilt Imps

It seems like it took forever but I finally finished the last quilt I was working on. It morphed from a full-sized quilt into a table runner, thanks to the quilting imps that were trying to take over my sewing studio.

I'm really pleased with the end result, but I hope I've learned my lesson about dealing with odd-size blocks. It seemed that the harder I tried to add to a block to make it an easier size to work with - or trim it down, the worse things got. At one point I even ripped the entire project apart. And I do mean rip. I didn't take out my seam ripper and carefully pull out stitches. I grabbed the darn thing and I started pulling it apart. It felt really good doing it too! I can recommend it when you're thoroughly disgusted with a project even though you might destroy a block. Since you already hate it, you're not hurting and you might just help. While no blocks were completely destroyed in my ripping, it lightened my heart and allowed me to go back to the project with a new quilting eye.

I decided to use an extra block on the back of the runner. I don't remember where the idea came from, but the back of the project just screamed for something to be there.
I knew for sure I didn't want to put it on point though. Figuring out those side triangles on the front almost killed me and I didn't want to do it again. The solution was making it into a "square in a square" block. I even found a calculator online to help me figure out the size. Here's a closeup of the block.

The hardest part was getting it placed in the center of the runner. After I had the backing pieced, I folded it in half to find it's center and did the same for the front. Then I just matched up the center points. I believe that worked quite well if I say so myself!

I did a quick and dirty free motion scroll for the quilting that was inspired from the fabric on the front of the quilt. This was a good project to practice my machine quilting. I'm getting better, but I still need more practice. Which means I need to start a new project! Hopefully those imps will not keep me from finding something else that sa(y)s quilts!