Aah, another productive weekend of sewing! How I love not working weekends anymore! It was well worth the pay cut. I finished sewing each block for the baby quilt I've been working on. Here they are before I sewed them together. At this point, I thought my biggest challenge was getting the colors arranged...oh, how wrong I was!!
Somehow, I hadn't yet considered just how I was going to sew these blocks together. I suppose if I was working from a pattern, or had taken a quilting class, I might have had a clue what I was up against, but as usual, I was winging it and making it up as I went along. I sewed each row of blocks together - no problem. My first hint of the challenge laying ahead came when I saw the rows lined up and realized that sewing the rows together was going to involve some very precise connections. I tried sewing the first row to the second using my machine...complete disaster...out came the seam ripper. Finally, after staring at the rows and trying to dream up an easy way to get the rows sewn together, I broke down and just sewed them together by hand. There just didn't seem to be another way to get them sewn together with the precision needed to make the blocks looked stacked properly. Looking back, if I had had a design wall, and hadn't sewn all the blocks before trying to hook them together, it probably wouldn't have been so challenging, but I don't have a design wall, or the patience to think that far ahead! Aah, lesson learned (or maybe not)! But anyway, at long last, my patience paid off and the rows were successfully sewn together.
Now, the next challenge...what color to use for the borders. After putting several scrap fabrics behind the blocks, I decided on the darkest blue. Next problem...Joann's didn't have that blue fabric! I had purchased most of these fabrics in fat bundles, and unfortunately, not all of the fabrics were available by the yard. Back to the drawing board. After laying out several (and I mean several!!!) fabrics on Joann's cutting counter, I decided on a nice, bright green. Green happens to be my least favorite color, so it took quite a bit of struggle for me to get past that. However, the quilt is not for me, and the green really did seem like the best choice. I also picked another cute fabric which I am planning on using for the back and perhaps a narrow border along with the green. I'll be working on that exact layout in the back of my mind this week and tackle the actual "making it happen" part next weekend. Hope the work week goes by quick! I'd rather sew than work any day of the week - can't wait until I can spend more time sewing and more time looking at sunshine instead of clouds!
