Quilting Disasters And How To Salvage This One

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 4:38 pm

Sarah’s quilt is nearing completion! I just have one block left to quilt, and then three border sections. Then I can bind it, and give it a much needed trip through the washer and drier before mailing it off to my baby. Woo-hoo! I’ll take pictures when it’s done so I can show it off.

So now the question is, what’s next? I started a scrap quilt last year and made 30 blocks. I’m somewhat challenged when it comes to making my blocks the same size. No matter how carefully I cut and sew, they still seem to have a mind of their own! The blocks were supposed to finish at six inches, but they range from five-and-a-half to five-and-seven-eighths. Sigh. This is why I love improvisational quilting so much! No need to worry about this sort of thing!

The quilt from hell

I had tried sewing the blocks together into a top for a lap quilt, which was a bit of a challenge because of the size differences in the blocks. I managed to get 25 of them sewn together, but I was disappointed in how it was coming out, so I abandoned it in my Closet Of No Return.

I was digging around in there the other day and unearthed it. Since I hated the way the top looked, I spent a couple of hours in front of the TV taking it apart. This isn’t a bad thing to do while watching NCIS reruns. (Mark Harmon is a hottie, and Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) is one of my favorite TV characters, so I watch this show a LOT.)

OK, back to square one, or should I say block one? I laid the blocks out in the floor and took a picture of them. What should I do with them? I could use them as the center of log-cabin type blocks and sew strips around the outside edges (like what I did with Sarah’s quilt). This would make them bigger, and I could square them up, too.

Another option is to cut each block in half diagonally and add an inch-wide strip to the diagonal cut. Then I could sew a half-square triangle to it, and make an entirely new block. This would certainly tone them down a bit, especially if I used the same fabric for the new half-square triangles, while still keeping the diagonal movement. After squaring them up, I could arrange them in a barn-raising pattern.

Or I could cut the blocks into quarter-square triangles, and make pinwheel blocks by sewing them to solid color half-square triangles.