Tuesday Sundries - My Joy is (a) Flimsy

My 'Joy' quilt top is finished. It's a 'flimsy' in quilting termnology. Which means the top is complete and it is now ready to be quilted.

This started out as a monthly class at The Sewing Palace in Helena, back in September, 2013.

At the time I was jazzed to actually be in a space to take a real quilting class. Most of my 'knowledge' is self-taught. However, a couple of months into the class, Texter was in the middle of a divorce and my classes went down the tube.

It was packed away and languished for quite a while until I could pick it up again. Unfortunately, many of the blocks had a 'trick' to them (hence the class) and I had to puzzle them out.

So in the intervening years, I learned, took a couple of other classes and picked up a bit of 'how-to' along the way.

One of the major things I learned with this quilt is about contrast! 

The genesis of this quilt was my love of the fabric I chose for the background. Blues and oranges (not a favorite color, but love it here) all swirled together. And I went from there.

Problem is, my background and the 'darks' and 'mediums' I selected blend too well. So much so, they ooze together. Many of the blocks aren't visable unless you get right on top of the quilt.

The second thing I realized in the five years of making this quilt is accuracy. Many of my blocks weren't quite precise and I lost the points on triangles when putting it all together. While paper piecing is fiddly, it is easier to be precise.

The third thing I have a bit of chagrin about is direction. When sewing the blocks together, in many cases, I didn't pay attention to the direction the block was placed in. Therefore, I might have three blocks with a color pointing one way and then the fourth one would have the color pointing the opposite direction. This could have been easily solved by paying attention to how I was sewing the blocks together. Plus, I was too lazy and to impatient to get this top finished to pick the block apart and redo it in the correct position. 

Another big lesson learned was about the geometry of quilt blocks and how they actually go together. The lightbulb went off when I realized blocks aren't a big 'chunk' of different fabrics, but actually smaller components arranged in a particular order. And when you learn that order, you learn how the block goes together. Sometimes though, figuring out that order and how to cut the fabric, are the hard part. 

Lessons learned to be carried forward:

• Contrast
• Accuracy 
• Direction
• Block construction

I do have the background fabric picked out of my stash. I just need to be sure it's going to be enough for the backing. The 'interesting' part will be trying to quilt it on my machine. It's a queen size quilt, so this may be an exercise in maneuvering. Hence, starting with a lap quilt in August to do some free motion quilting on.

So the quilt didn't turn out exactly like I envisioned. But I'm ok with that. There are several mistakes throughout the top. And I'm ok with that too. I learned, improving as it went along, and am now more confident in my abilities.

Onto the next quilt!