dianec42

I went to Bennington Quiltfest today! Here are a few quilts I liked. Click each one to embiggen.

What I planned, vs what I actually managed to sew

As ever, click any image to embiggen

Layout, block one:


Layout, block two:


Block one, put together 50% wrong:


Block two, also put together 50% wrong:


I seam-ripped the erroneous seams, came up with a system, re-pinned and re-sewed. I got one of them wrong AGAIN and gave up for the day.

... because to hell with hand sewing even half of it, I am never doing that again.

Back of "quilt":


Front of "quilt":


Please ignore the random stitching lines across the body of the practice quilt. :D All things considered I think this went well.

This was my second attempt. The first was hilariously bad and I should really post some pictures of that.

Yay!

Quilt top:


Top and backing:


Bear for scale:


Now to make a bag, decide if I have it in me to make bear clothes too (I have ideas...) and look up easier ways to attach the binding.

Whoof. These are getting harder.

The original planned layout:



An alternative layout:



I went with the second layout (approximately), here it is finished (ruler for scale):



Given that it needed 4 colors, of the ones I had, this was going to be obnoxiously loud no matter what. I struggled, especially at the end. On the last seam, one of the previous seams flipped its direction (on the underside, of course, so I didn't see it) causing me to have to sew through rather more layers of fabric than anticipated. I broke my top thread on the first go, forced it through on the second go. There's also a bit of a pucker on one of the blobby purple bits on the final seam. I have decreed it to be Good Enough because (a) I can't see the pucker from 4 feet away, and (b) will you LOOK at those POINTS.

Unlike the previous blocks which all came out a tad smaller than the intended 12.5" on a side, this one seems to be a smidge larger?? I was pretty tired by the end of it(*) so I may have been measuring wrong. I will deal with that another day.

(*) honestly I was pretty tired and short of brain when I started. I'm impressed I made a thing at all.

I got Block 3 done, in a single day! I'm somewhat surprised that it's pretty much square, AND pretty much exactly the same size as the first two.



They do get harder after this. But I think I'm getting decently good at this so far.

P.S. I was briefly bummed that I didn't think to cut the aqua so the directional pattern would all go the same way. But I think I like this better - it has kind of a swirly water thing going on.