Monday, September 22, 2008

Happy Autumn and Quiltathon Results

My calendar says Autumn begins today. Happy Autumn. Since I haven't finished everything I wanted to do for spring and summer, I have my work cut out for me. I've made a list, and hopefully today I can get more productive. If I can get off the computer, that is.

I have been quilting this weekend, because Judy said we had to. It's Quiltathon time. What did I do? I cut up lots of fabric and sewed them together, of course. Isn't that what quilters do? I went through my scrap basket and cut up some squares from quilts I have made before. I found all sorts of lovely blue fabric - from the kaleidoscope quilt, my niece's quilt, the Evening Stars, the story maze quilt, the Japanese quilt, the denim circles quilt.

I've made a lot of cutting mistakes on this quilt, so I trimmed one eighth inch off of all my squares. Fun times. I have enough fabric to cut all new squares (for several quilts), but then I would have to figure out what to do with this size square, and I would rather try to reduce scraps. And to think, there was a time when I was envious of scraps and wanted to make some.


I am glad I didn't tell you last week that I had finished with the outside star points. I was almost done with all of my little flying geese when I realized that I had added dark squares to the sides of the big flying geese when I needed light squares. It wasn't that much of a problem to rip them out, since it was something I could do while I was watching tv, and I need that size square for another part of the quilt, so it isn't wasting much.

Two steps forward, one step back. I'm not sure why I am making so many mistakes in this quilt. I think it all leads to not paying attention to the directions as much as I usually do. I've been spoiled by step by step directions. Even though I understand the directions in this quilt, everything leads to the picture and I think I know what it looks like, and don't bother to look at it as often as I should.

Eventually this quilt will get finished, and hopefully I will have discovered all the errors I want to correct before it is all finished.

3 comments:

Donna said...

some quilts are just designed to teach us humbleness! I've had a couple that you'd think were the hardest thing going given the number of mistakes I made -- I think its easy to not pay close attention when it seems easy, and then you regret it later.... YOu're being increadibly patient and back tracking though. I usually just push ahead and end up with something very different then the orginal intent as I hate backward sewing so very much.... :-)

Jen said...

I love all your blues. Japanese indigos especially. You will have a lovely quilt at the end of it all. Jen

Lea said...

Your scrap basket had a beautiful blues! I'm looking forward to see what you'll make with those lovely blues. :-)