Snowflake quilt, otherwise known as I Am A Masochist

I have heard that there are people out there (like unicorns?) who love both quilting and sewing clothes.  I even know one such person.  Maybe the only one.  And in fact it's her fault that I had to make this quilt, because she made it first and I fell in love, and I felt that sinking dread that only the idea of cutting out 495 3.5" squares could birth. Oh that and sewing them all together with a 1/4" seam allowance.  THAT dread.  

 

It took about 18 months for me to finally cave in.  I bought the supplies last year: rotating cutting blade, cutting mat, washable pen, 1/4" seam allowance foot (with guide) and a huge pile of batting.  The reason I finally made the quilt is actually because I got sick of that batting taking up my closet space - that and the pile of scraps.  I like a clean sewing space, which is totally ridiculous as my sewing space is a vomit of fabric scraps, and anyway getting this done seemed like a step closer to the unachievable goal of Empty Floor. Also my brother's wife was kind enough to lie and tell me it takes a week for her to make a quilt.  So, bolstered by the idea that suffering is impermanent, I forged onward.  

Discovered that I'd used my white silk to make a dress and then got rid of it and so I had to use velvet scraps to supplement the white.  So now add in: sewing shifty velvet with a 1/4" SA to the list of torture.  It took 3 squares for me to realise this was time for wonder tape to save the day. One roll of wonder tape was enough for every single velvet square to be taped to all its neighbors.  Unfortunately that did leave sticky edges on the front which I suppose will eventually be washed off.  (Neglected to do so before quilting.)

I honestly, truly, did not think that making a quilt would be horrible.  I was so wrong. Cutting out a million little pieces with no room for error was boring and made my hands hurt.  Making the half-squares was terrifying since I didn't have any extra white if I messed up.  Laying it out on my floor was the first bit of satisfaction...then I realised I now had to sew the entire thing together.  It was the most boring sewing I have ever done, and I even started listening to music and podcasts to make the time pass.  I literally woke up with dread for days in a row, pining for a simple sweatshirt project.  But like many things that are TOTALLY TYPE 3 FUN the only thing to do is do it all without hesitation, otherwise it would surely be crumpled into a corner for the next 7 years. 

 

 

It took me about 3 weeks, maybe 4 to make the quilt top.  That included a lot of knitting time and surfing time instead of sewing time.  I took a short break then pinned all the layers together with all the pins in my house and left it folded into a little porcupine hiding in the corner. After that, I took a few (3) days months off...mentally thinking of everything that might go wrong with the quilting.  I mainly anticipated stress from things bunching up.

I had also decided to wash all the wonder tape off, but forgot before I pinned all my layers together, so I thought that might make my machine foot sticky.  (It didn't).  I procrastinated.  I sewed all my wips and then waited til I was woozy from night shifts.  That's when quilting 99 straight lines started to sound like fun sewing.  I quilted from the centre out, following the lines of the squares.  I don't know how you're supposed to do it but what I rapidly learned is that you should always quilt in parallel, do not do a perpendicular line to "hold things in place".  That perpendicular line caused heaps of trauma as the quilt bunched up right before it on each row, and I ended up ripping most of it out but rather after it had caused the damage. 

The single best advice I read about doing the quilting was to not worry about it puffing up, that the puffiness is what makes a quilt "quilty."  That really took the stress off.  There are lots of spots which aren't precise, or where it did bunch up, or I didn't catch a tiny fold in the fabric, and I felt ok leaving some of those if they weren't easy to undo.  I would have finished in two sessions (the first being that post night shift one) but I was called in to work extra and it took 3 days.  After that I cut all the edges flush and prepped my non-bias tape.  Yup, it is just strips, no bias!  The cutting (cutting!  What if it turns into a parallelogram?!) and the binding were also kind of alarming and I both googled and asked Tessa how to do it before I bound the edges. She recommended not even trying to hand sew or stitch in the ditch on the back of the quilt, but just to topstitch the back binding down and expect that line of stitching to show in the front.  I did it in lime green.  Honestly as it got to the end it was weirdly anticlimactic.  The hard part was done, the stress had subsided and now...I have a quilt! 

Finished before going on my birthday hiking trip/week away.  This was planned...I will return to a space actually not full of longstanding wips, which I thought is the best birthday present I can give myself.