Saturday, April 18, 2009

Swirligigs


I just finished this top, in the Bargello Blues class at http://www.quiltuniversity.com/. It contains 1038 pieces (not including borders, which are 9 pieces and really shouldn't count). The smallest pieces are 1 inch by 3/4 inch, or finished in the quilt, 1/2 inch by 1/4 inch.


I used strip piecing.


Otherwise I would be a drooling idiot about now.


And also not finished.

The only way I survived was to realize that I can screw up sewing a checkerboard pattern together. This, if you look at it closely, is a checkerboard -- a very complicated checkerboard -- which means I can screw it up.

Very easily.

The teacher provided a chart of where each piece was. I checked to make sure I was going to sew the pieces in the strips together correctly. I checked to make sure I had sewn them correctly. I sewed the strip to the next strip. I checked to make sure I had done this part correctly. Then I marked off my progress on the chart.

(This comes from working in the nuclear industry. We have quality control up the ying yang. We make sure we are going to do it right, we check multiple times during the process to make sure we are doing it right, and we check to make sure we did it right. And when the process engineers believe the analytical laboratory when the results aren't right, nothing terrible happens. Usually.)

(I like digressing, don't you?)

Because of this, I encountered only one glitch. The good news is that it was on a strip that was 3/4 inch wide and I didn't have very big seams to redo. The bad news is that it was on a strip that was 3/4 inch wide and fraying is a big problem.

The other good news is that the rectangles are offset, so I did not have to match seams. There is NO bad news to this!

I am covered it little tiny threads. To the point where I had to go buy a new lint brush.

I am very happy with the results! Now on to the next part, which is designing my own pattern! I'll keep you posted!

posted by Marion @ 6:29 PM

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