Sunday, 3 March 2013

(S)crappy quilting and swoon part 2

 
 
It's done!  It was finished last weekend but has been sitting around until I could get a daylight picture of it in it's full glory.  Unfortunately I cannot say it is my best work infact it is probably close to some of the worst quilting I have ever done.
 
I blame British Gas.
 
Honestly it was all their fault. 
 
Just as I sat down to start quilting on the evening of the day of interruptions British Gas called trying to flog me something.  When I returned to the sewing machine some 15 minutes later all of my plans seemed to have left my brain space.  I started to quilt.  Badly.  20 minutes in I ended up ripping out a whole load of stiches and vowed to return to it the next day.
 
I did.  And soon realised that I didn't have enough room in the 'sewing room' aka the spare bedroom to quilt the monster.  I stopped and took all my stuff down to the kitchen where there was enough space plus a radiator. 
 
Then I hit a whole load of tension issues.  I starting swearing and shouting and then that was followed by a whole lot of screaming until my Janome started to play nicely.
 
By this point I wanted it done.  So I upped the speed which resulted in some seriously wonky straight lines.  I like to refer to them as organic but they are in fact just plain crappy.
 
I had a whole lot of scrappy binding to hand and so that was whizzed on and hand stitched to finish in front of the fire/telly with a BIG drink!
 
 

Don't look too closely! 


Backed in the IKEA numbers print that everyone seems to have lying around and quilted each side of every other square to create a simple grid.  My second quilt of the year - it was finished in February and I'm having it as my month's make!  Destined for my youngest daughter's bed and it's a good job really as it's not going to win any prizes and I'm not sure I could face it being in anyone else's home!


So that was last weekend.  This weekend has been all about this baby:

 
 
I have finally got round to doing my first swoon block using my Simply Solids stash.  Friday evening and Saturday morning I cut all the solids for 3 blocks and this morning I spent a couple of hours putting my first block together.  It took me a while.  I have learned an important lesson since last weekend - sometimes speed isn't your friend. 
 
I read the instructions and re-read them but I think I might have missed the part about pressing seams open as some of my points are a bit bulky.  I'm gonna re-read those instructions again before I do my next 2 blocks but saying that I'm happier about this baby than the #(s)crappytripalong as I am now calling it.

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