Saturday, October 14, 2006

Is it still hip to be square?


Well my quilt top finally is, anyway! Square, that is. This is an excercise in using curved lines and has been quite fun to work with, until this morning... I had pieced the center, but wasn't quite happy with it, so I took the four blocks apart and restitched them. Much better. But after adding the triangles it was impossible to get the piece to be square. I kept measuring and cutting and would have ended up with a tiny yellow piece if I hadn't stopped myself. I started wondering about using Melody Johnson's escape hatch finish, but I had carefully calculated that my last scrap of that lovely floral Kaffe Fasset fabric was just big enough to use for the binding and would give the perfect finishing touch, so I was not going to choose that route. Not this time, anyway.
The solution was to remove the black triangles, cut the square in the middle with straight lines and making sure it was excactly square before stitching the triangles back on. After all my "adjustments" (not mistakes...) two of the triangles were too small, so additional scraps were added, and here it is.
I should have straightened it out a bit before I took the picture, because it does actually lie flat in real life. Now I'm off to find some backing fabric, and prepare it for quilting, and then it's on to the next pile of fabrics, to finish that Amy Butler quilt:

I went on a wild internet shopping spree when I heard that her Ginger Bliss collection was discontinued, and I have gathered so much of it that I have decided to make a pieced backing as well,making it a totally reversible lap quilt. I really need to add a border or two to this, but I can't quite decide on what I'll do. I'll piece the backing first, and then see how wide a border I need before I decide. The problem is finding colours that match if I go outside her collection. I'll have to get back to you on that one, the fabric is calling me back to the sewing table...

No comments :