Monday, March 15, 2010

Joseph's Coat Progress Report

I have little to report  as PROGRESS on this project since my post a month ago, since I haven't worked on it at all.  But Kellie has asked us to all post updates...so here's the synopsis.

I have 25 blocks finished and ready to piece together, a fact that is unchanged from January 5th.  I am in the process of working on 11 more blocks which,  when completed, will be the next 3 rows.  I have all the background and joining pieces nicely pressed and ready for action.

I like to work on this project while watching TV, which is why I got so much done in the Fall:  I'm a fan of (American) football.  I thought I'd get more done during the Olympics, but finished working on a number of other projects instead (see blog entries re: original columbine blocks, and the 2 Ashley quilts).  If I know that I'll be sitting in a waiting room (doctor appointments, etc), I'll tuck a square or two into a Ziplock bag to take along.  And every few months, I have to attend an all day staff meeting, with a group that is not offended if I do handwork.  I also knew going into this semester, that I would not have any spare time in the evenings, which is one of the reasons I tried to get so far ahead over Christmas break. (I'm a consultant and teach a university course as adjunct faculty.)  With no plans for Spring Break, except relaxing, I hope to increase my "finished" count to 36.  And I'll be finishing this bad boy in May/June (when my classes end, but my daughters are still in school).

Admittedly, I have not been following Kellie's directions exactly.  I couldn't afford the fuseable at the time the project started, and I'm too lazy to do the freezer paper.  I used the back-basting needle turn approach.  This saves me a ton of time with the fuse, glue and positioning steps.  The "up" side, is that I save several hours per block this way, and my points are perfect.  The "down" side is that the points aren't perfectly symmetrical, and the joining step is a little more fussy.  I blogged on those steps in January.   Also, because I'm picking the fabric colors as I go, I have to be more thoughtful about distributing the fabrics evenly, and b/c it's a scrap/stash quilt, there are a few fabrics I'm having to save for the final 2 rows, so things look a little more even.   I find it best to baste & applique 3 alternating center petals first.  This decreases the amount of bulk of fabric hanging around at the center.  Then I baste & stitch the other 3 center petals. The 3rd round is the outer 6.  I prefer to work on 6-10 blocks at once (the exact # usually determined by the next goal cut-off).   I typically work one color at a time, across the stack of blocks.  That way I don't have to continually switch thread colors.

One thing that I hadn't planned, but worked out very well, is that I took the project with me to several social gatherings, and let my friends pick out their favorite color combos for the center 6 petals.  This helped me to keep things random.  And if their choices were a bit odd, I'd just balance it out with the outer 6.  Though I can no longer tell who did which, it's fun to think about the fact that a 6 year old picked one set, and another grouping selected by my-husband's-best-friend's-girlfriend.

This quilt is my older daughter's High School graduation quilt.  She is graduating, 9 months early, in August '10.  She picked the fabrics from the stash.  That has been part of my challenge.  I would have NEVER chosen to use this many different colors of fabrics.  And some of her favorites are the ones that I think don't really go with the rest.  Given my druthers, this would have been hot pink or red scraps on black.

I plan to make this a completely reversable quilt...since the last quilt I made for the daughter, lives on the bed backing side up (but mom, I really like this side...)  I plan to take the big pieces that are left and make a filmstrip quilt. I plan to quilt by hand between the petals so the quilting on the back side looks like a field of curved triangles.

4 comments:

Jude said...

the colours you have used are great and we aal have to slow our works in progress at times. I am going away for 3 weeks so there will not be any activity on my quilt during that time.

Rose Marie said...

Well done, you are way ahead of me. Love your blocks and colours.

Marielle said...

I love the colors in you DLN quilt, I just put my blocks togheter without paying to much attention to wich fabric is where, because it did not work out when I tried to have no matching fabrics in the same row

Brianna said...

Love the colours in your quilt. Don't feel bad I only started my quilt yesterday so a lot of catching up for me to do!