So Much to Wilt About

It is REALLY HARD to make a quilt without a pattern or directions. I have had so many problems. I have done a lot of work, but I am less far along than I was last time I posted.

The quilt has three kinds of pieces: Blocks, Sashing Strips, and Cornerstones. I made them all, not without difficulty, and even started sewing them together. Now I am facing the prospect of doing most of them over.

Here are the Blocks:

These are the only pieces that worked out well. I made them to finish at 6". The blue inner square finished at 3".  

I happen to have a number of sets of Marti Michell templates from Saturday Sampler classes I have taken. It turns out that Set A had all the templates I needed to make these 6 " blocks.  Yay! Set A is called The 3" Basic Square Set. The set has more than three pieces, but I only needed these three:

I put little silicone circles on them. It makes them more stable when you are using them. Otherwise, they tend to slide around on the fabric.

Here are some of my Sashing Strips:

The arrows show some of the worst areas of buckling

The Sashing Strips are supposed to finish at 6" x 2". These were the hardest pieces. They were hard to cut and hard to sew. They ended up being too long, crooked, poorly aligned, buckled, cock-eyed . . .  you name it. I thought I was being careful, but these pieces call for the very highest level of attention.

I pressed the seams away from the center and then realized you could see the seams through the fabric. I thought I was going to have redo all of them. I ripped out parts of the seams on one piece, and tried to press the seams toward the center until I realized that there would be an unacceptable problem with overlapping seams near the points.

I used Marti Michell's Long Skinny Sashing Star Set. I have no idea how to make the diamonds without some sort of template, but the Long Skinny Sashing Star templates are not easy to use. For example, to make the diamonds, you have to cut one side of the diamond, then flip the template around and cut the other side. You needed to make marks in two of those tiny pin-holes using a pencil, and then align the template on the pencil marks after you have flipped it.

Note the tiny holes for marking alignment.
(I used small adhesive sandpaper circles to help stabilize the templates. Maybe I need a few more?)

I didn't realize the Sashing Strips were too long until I had made all of them. A few of them might be okay. I thought maybe I could trim the ones that are too long, but I still have many that are crooked, buckled, and/or cock-eyed. How could this turn out so badly?

Do I try to re-use the pieces? Do I simply trim the ones that are too long? I don't know how much of my problem is a cutting problem, and how much is a sewing problem, so I think I had better cut out new pieces. Thank goodness I have lots of fabric.

And then there are the Cornerstones.

The Cornerstones need to finish at 2" x 2". I had to use the Pythagorean Theorem to figure out the size of the inner square. The outer square is 2" x 2" so the outer triangles have catheti of 1". That means the hypoteneuse is 1 . . . a squared + b squared = c squared . . .

the square root of two! Aha, it's 1.414! So that is going to be finished size of the inner square.  So, add 1/4" for the seam allowance and it will be 1.664. No. I think I will need to add 1/2". Right? So it will be 1.914? How am I going to measure that? Can I round it to 2?

What about these really small templates in Set A? Wouldn't they be the right size? I think the template will give me a 2" square, not a 1.914" square. But it comes with Set A. It should work, right?

So, the first time I cut out the black triangles, I had the grain the wrong way. After I realized that, I cut out another set of black triangles, and sewed ALL the Cornerstones together. Yay! Almost done.

Then I laid everything out and started sewing rows together. After I sewed the first row together I realized it was too long. And I also realized that the Cornerstones were a little wider than the rest of the Sashing Strips. I measured and I thought and I looked at the pictures and the templates and the template instructions, and I finally was forced to accept the fact that these templates were never intended for the purpose I used them for. I didn't think 0.86 inches was a big deal, but it was. I should have known that. I did know that. I just got lazy. How do you measure such a small size anyway?

I found that we had an engineering ruler that had tenths of an inch. That helped me with my measuring. I made my own templates, a tiny bit smaller than the Set A templates. I made a few new Cornerstones and sewed them to some Sashing Strips. Much better! A whole row of pieces that are off by 0.86 turns out to be off by a really significant amount.

Now, do I rip out the seams, trim all the pieces, and re-sew, or just cut new pieces?

Sigh. I am so wilted.

Lessons Learned:

• Measuring matters. It REALLY matters.
• Measure before you sew ALL your pieces. Sew before you cut ALL your pieces.
• Don't be lazy. A tiny little discrepancy isn't going to go away. It is going to multiply.
• Always check the grain before you cut.
• Don't assume that just because templates come in the same set you can use them all in the same project.