I will be reporting weekly sporadically on a new quilt on which I am working. I am in the quilt top stage, and hope I will follow this through to a completed project.

If you haven’t already, check out the previous posts:

• Quiltreport 1 here
• Quiltreport 2 here
• Quiltreport 3 here

July 27 — I have finished laying out the quilt top — just setting the cut pieces where they should go. I didn’t have enough material for a couple of the colors (as I am a math whiz), so off to Joanne’s Fabrics I must go, which I found out is just “Jo-Ann”, spelt like that, with no possessive. It’s a hybrid of the company’s co-owners’ daughters names. The original owners were refugees from Nazi Germany. Now I’m starting to feel a little bad about bashing the store in the previous quiltreport. Anyway, off to Jo-Ann I go. And I’m wondering how much like the chart it’s gonna look. Ugh.

Warning: Oh! And! I use a rotary cutter to cut my pieces — a pizza-cutter looking thing that many crafters use to precision-cut fabric. Earlier, I was using a thin metal ruler as a cutting guide (as it’s longer than my thicker, safer lucite ruler). The blade jumped the ruler and nicked my finger. A super close call, as the rotary blade is basically a round razor, and one must bear down pretty firmly when cutting. I only zapped the skin, no blood but I remember thinking “oh shit, where’s an emergency room around here?” Notes to self: the rotary cutter is my master; and find out where my damn emergency room is. And make sure I never have to go.

Update: I worked all day. It’s hard to stop, once in the zone. All rows are sewn except for the two that need extra material (I didn’t make it to Jo-Ann — my sister called and I had to talk her through her trauma of running over a bird today). I started sewing the black sashing on the completed rows and holy mama, it’s starting to look just like the chart. It looks really, really good. I grinned and grinned, seeing this meshuga idea come to life.

Fun fact: I quilted all day in nothing but my underwears!!

July 29 — Quilt top, complete! Oh, quilt top, you’re so fine. I’m trying not to dwell on the less-than-precise alignment and dumb little mistakes. The chalk was surprisingly hard to get off — I dabbed and dabbed with a wet cloth and now must re-iron the whole thing. But it really looks like the chart! Hey!

I’m really glad I used the chalk to mark each piece, though. It helped me to keep everything in order. Each piece was marked with the letter I assigned to each color, and with the row number. I still managed to screw up and employ my seam ripper a couple times. You can see the chalky goodness here:

I have to psych myself up for the next phase – the pinning. One must have to make a precise “sandwich” of quilt top + batting + quilt back. Smooth, pin, align, pin, undo, pin. Pin, pin, pin. I may use a brand new tool in my arsenal. We’ll see if it helps. I also am searching for someone with an open floor plan and some hard-surface floors, upon which I can built the sandwich. Easily, this is my least favorite stage. Wish me luck!

Go to Quiltreport 4.B: random craft cruft

Related hamblinks:

• Quiltreport 1
• Quiltreport 2
• Quiltreport 3
• My quilts and other projects on flickr
• Today, I taught someone to quilt
• Ducks in Bonnets!
• Gee’s Bend
• i’m a member of a qult