The Quilt

Since I haven’t done anything on my quilt for a week, I thought I’d tell you the process I’m using to turn six pieces of material into a work of art. Or at least that’s how I see it.
I’ve wanted to make a quilt for years. I have bought books and magazines for years. I started hand piecing a wedding ring quilt when I was in my twenties that sets in a drawer. It’s made from scraps of clothing I’ve made over the years and has a lot of sentimental value, but may never be finished.

The pattern is called the broken star. It is a diamond pattern made from straight lines. So each of my material pieces has a curve in it. I have a paisley, a poke-a-dot, a random teardrop, a fleur de lis, a tulip with a curving stem, and a solid. All of the pieces are in shades of blue. The patchwork diamonds will be set together with white. I found out that picking material for a quilt is quite different from picking material for a dress or a decorating project. You have to look at the patterns and the colors and how they blend together.

The first step is to cut the material into 2 inch strips. You use a rotary cutter, which looks like a pizza cutter, and a quilting ruler. I’d never used a rotary cutter before, so it took some experimenting to find the right angle to hold it and the right pressure to use. But after cutting 4 yards of material into 2 inch strips I feel pretty confident now.

After you have cut the strips, you sew one of each strip together side by side. There are three sequences for placing which piece of material next to which piece. To me this has been the easiest step! Just zipping along sewing straight pieces of material together in straight lines.

The third step is to cut 64 sections of each set of the sewn together strips into two inch sections. You use the ruler again to cut them at a 45 degree angle. My ruler is 6 inches wide and 12 inches long with one inch lines marked down the length of it. It has a 45 degree angle marked on one end and a 60 degree angle on the other end. It’s made from clear plastic so you can see where it is on the material.

Once the sections are cut, they are sewn together making a diamond pattern. This step has been the hardest for me. The seams have to match perfectly! So that means a lot of matching and pinning, and I usually don’t pin the material together when I sew. The problem is the seams you are matching go at 45 degree angles opposite each other. I’m not for sure this makes sense, because it’s a geometry thing, and the only way I got through geometry was thanks to Harry Leopold. Just take my word for it, it’s hard. Plus the material stretches because it’s cut on the bias. And some pieces stretch more than others because of the material.

Once you have diamonds, they are sewn onto white squares. And this is as far as I’ve gotten. I’ve learned a lot and had a lot of fun. Most of the women in the class knew each other from other classes. It’s been good to meet them. While I’d never say we’ve become best friends, it’s been good to share in "the sisterhood." I can see how quilting bees would be therapeutic–your hands are busy but your mind is free to wander and so thoughts and feelings would be shared.
The plan is to hit the quilt hard this weekend and have a fourth of it done by Wednesday. I’ll let you know how it all works out.

(I apologize for the weird justification of this blog. But it's the first time I've done pictures and so I don't know what I'm doing. And not knowing how to do it on SLOW dial up is terrible. So I'm taking what I can get and giving it to you.)