It's Friday and I'm Finished!

I'm finished just in time for Friday Sew-N-Tell!  That is to say, I've finished one step in the long cloth-to-quilt process.  The Whirligigs quilt top is pieced, and in the process named itself after the villains in the Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie.  Introducing the Blue Meanies!  See the resemblance?

I think it's interesting how the immediate dramatic element is those light hourglasses, rather than the pinwheels. It's one of the exciting parts of quilting - seeing what unexpected effects emerge from the block pattern and initial design. Now, I have to tell you that my points are not perfect, but I plead guilty with an explanation. You may notice that half the pinwheels spin one way and the others go the other way (see lame joke about Australia in a previous post). I pieced all the thisaway blocks a couple of weeks ago, with my regular, devil-may-care seam allowance. Then last weekend, I attended the Square in a Square workshop, with her military insistence on scant quarter-inch seam allowances (and they do look nice, so no complaints). But when I came back to sew up all the thataway blocks, even though I reminded myself to ease up on the seam allowance to match the other ones, I found that the second set of blocks measured, in some cases, a full half-inch bigger than the first set. I was as careful as I could be through the trimming and truing process to size the blocks so that the seams would match up, but it wasn't perfect. Drat. Consider this entire quilt one whole humility block!

Trying to decide if I want a border or not. What do you think?

Getting There

My brain goes to sleep when I'm fasting on Yom Kippur, but I did manage to trim and true all my blocks for the Whirlygig quilt without nipping my fingers off. There are 72 blocks at 7 1/2" square, to make up into 56 x 63" quilt top. So it will be twice as wide as the blocks in the photo and a bit longer. I'm trying to decide whether I want a border or not.

Last night we broke the fast at the home of some friends. I headed straight for the coffee, and boy did it hit me like a kick from a mule! My headache vanished immediately, and I paid elaborate compliments to the blintzes, kugel and smoked salmon. But I paid the price of that java jolt later by not being able to sleep at all. The battery from my laptop ran out at 3.40am, but not before I had spent a small fortune ordering fabric online. Oy!

Pinwheels

My daughter is sixteen and has requested a quilt.  I asked her what kind of quilt she wanted, because it had to be something that I could stand working on, natch!   She didn't want anything that had too much going on in terms of pattern, perhaps she's still in the ugh, don't let my carrots touch my brisket phase of life.  She looked at several quilts online and rejected many of my suggestions as too busy.  But pinwheels were simple and clean enough to suit her.

I'm using another roll of Kaffe Fasset from my LQS and other assorted blues, purples and greens.  The background is an off-white figured with a pale blue motif.  Here are some of the fabrics.

The blocks are 7 1/2" when finished.  I'm planning on using 72 blocks, which will make it a good size.  I really like how this pinwheel tutorial showed the template taped to the bottom of the ruler.  I hate using templates, because they are often so small and fiddly, especially homemade ones, and I'm afraid I'm going to rotary cut my fingers off.  But this one was perfect; just lay the ruler over the rectangle with the template lined up on the corners and slash away!  Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Today after synagogue I got into my comfy drawers and pieced half the blocks.  Since the fabric was folded before I cut it, selvedge to selvedge, like normal, it means half the pinwheels will spin one way and the remaining half will spin the other way (we'll say they're from Australia).  The daughter wasn't too pleased with that idea, and reminded me she gets motion sickness.  Sheesh!

Issues so far:  my blocks are shockingly untrue.  I am using my twenty year old rulers which predate the non-slip finish that the new ones have, and this must be causing me some grief when I cut the strips from the main piece of fabric.  Although I don't recall such a problem back in the day when I was first quilting with them. Also, for the first time, I am not washing my fabric before cutting it.  That's because I did wash the 6" strips for the Valley of the Dolls quilt and the resulting shredding from the cut edges of 20 pieces of fabric had to be seen to be believed.  It took ages to pick each one apart from the rat's nest.  Still it goes against the grain not to wash the fabric.  I think you get a fine "crinkly goodness" anyway, since the batting is not washed pre-assembly.  Anyway, I feel like not washing makes it hard for me to find the true grain of the fabric, although this is probably just another excuse for hasty work that leads to errors.  Ah well, it will all come straight in the end. *fingers crossed*