Squaring and Sewing

Gurrrllll, it is a new language up in here! I have to square up my fat quarters, wha? wha? It could almost be a pickup line at a Jenny Craig meeting: “Hey sweet thang, I’d love to square up yooooour fat quarters!” Um, no. If anyone even dares say that to me over my Lite & Easy meal, you best believe I will be using my rotary blade to square up their face. Wow, rage much? Breathe. Sparkle thoughts. 

Okay, Molli is back in a happy place! So after arranging, washing and then ironing my fat quarters I knew I had to cut them into perfect angles so that I could begin cutting them into strips. The funny thing was that I still didn’t have much direction with the design of my quilt. Obviously, I knew yellow was going to play a big part of it, and in my head I was hoping for a gradation design, but that sort of fizzled. (Dark shades of yellow started to remind me of baby poop!) I began leaning more towards a simple patchwork of yellow squares. What was Ms. Molli Sparkles thinking about doing 2″ finished squares? For my first quilt?!

I’ve been known to bite off more than I can chew, but I wasn’t going to let something a mere 2″ stand in my way! (I’m much more talented than that!) So after squaring up my fat quarters, and speaking to Grandma Sparkle again, I began cutting those precious yellow textiles into 2.5″ strips.  Strips upon strips of fabric later, I began to sew. Now, since I didn’t own a sewing machine I had to borrow Mr. Molli Sparkle’s mum’s sewing machine. And, having never sewn before, I had to learn to sew. Just a few small challenges to overcome!  

Sew, sew, sew, many strips of fabric later, I had become a bobbin winding champion, and had combined all of my strips into sections containing four different fabrics each. It’s hard work trying to be random! I think there’s probably a mathematical formula to it, but my name is Ms. Molli Sparkles, not Ms. Jenome Geometry! After combining here, and flirting with my old arrange/rearrange addiction I sliced in the opposite direction and combined these strips with others to create four-by-four patchwork blocks.  It was all finally starting to take shape!

From the beginning, the intention was to use all of the purchased fabric and make a queen sized quilt. Well, once I got down to having created all of my patchwork blocks, I knew I had to square them up as well, before sewing them all together. Except, whoops, upon squaring them, they weren’t all 8.5″ as needed; about half were only 8″.  Now I’m usually not one to quarrel about anything over 8″, but I knew this was going to be a half inch I really needed! Consistency, is key! So my plans for being making a Queen, quickly turned into plans for making two lap sized quilts. Do y’all enjoy that part of the design process where you just have to go with it? I’m learning that I love it!

I decided to just concentrate on those 8.5″ blocks and what I could build out of them. After laying them out on the floor (my current design wall) I endeavoured not to have any of the same blocks touching, and that was about the only rule. I could see the end in sight, so sew like a whirling dervish, I did! 

In the end, it all came together as a giant piece of patchwork built upon tiny yellow-toned squares. What a crazy-ass piece of work I am for thinking I’d just make a yellow quilt! So while it’s just the top that is complete, I’m super shiny excited that it came together as well as it did. Especially, considering, this bitch didn’t even know how to sew a few months ago!

Now that I have this sewing bug that I can’t shake (you fellow bloggers are not helping! xoxo) its time to figure out what to do with those 8″ blocks. Let’s just say I’ve already figured it out!  Look for a future blog post about that current work in progress!  Overall, the intended recipient will be pleasantly surprised this piece of patchwork is going to be theirs!  I do have to figure out how to quilt the mother, but I’m sure I’ll get there soon!