Riot and Frolic

…you just got your ass kicked by a pregnant lady.  I've wanted to say this for a variety of reasons the last eight months, but I'll apply it to my craftiness today.

Yep.  That quilt is all…quilted.  It awaits the binding process because, to tell you the truth, I cannot stand to sit at the sewing machine anymore today.  Quilting was not my favorite part of making a quilt.  Ironic, huh?  

My "process":

I decided early on that I wasn't going to put too much stock into measuring and pressing, like all quilting knowledge tells you to do.  I had my general idea of design, combining the striped front of SouleMama's seemingly too-easy blanket and Posie Gets Cozy's amazing quilt back.  I cut a zillion 4.5 x 10.5" rectangles.  Way too many rectangles.  

Sewed sewed sewed, then laid them out on my batting to take a guess at the solid stripe width. The winning measurement for those was 3.5".  

Sew sew sew.  Then cut top and bottom white stripes [random music video link] to fit.  

Sew sew sew.  Sleep.  Wake up to searing back cramp from non-ergonomic sewing position. Piece together quilt back from not-quite-long enough muslin that's remaining and add a cute little stripe .

Sew sew sew.  Start quilting.  Swear quite a lot.  Discover dislike of quilting.  So much fabric to handle!  Take break to make bias binding.  Neat!  (Here's a great tutorial on how to make your own bias tape, plus her website is phenom[enal].)  Give in to using an iron. Go back to quilting and swearing.

Sew sew sew.  Give up for today.

BIG THANK YOU to my dearest friend, Cathy, for her emergency thread delivery!  Plus, we got to chat and I don't get to see her to often because we're both crazy.  Or busy.  Or crazy busy.  Something like that.  Anyways, it was way up and above the call of duty and totally awesome of her.

I'm listening to elbow.  You haven't heard of them?  Check out "One Day Like This" on the playlist.  Who-ah.  They're great.  AND having just looked up their website for the link, I highly recommend checking out their site.  Play with that first page you get.  Fun.  

Tomorrow: lessons learned about making a quilt, and Navin Johnson.

Photo by Mel Traxel