Iiiiiiiiit's John Boy!

Maybe this makes me a lazy sewer -- and really, is there any doubt that I am? -- but I really like to be entertained while I sew.

Traditionally I've listened to podcasts while sewing given the aural nature of that medium, but while working on my latest quilt I started watching The Americans. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of nuance and visual cues and whatnot, but I'm enjoying the show anyway, and if I like it well enough I can always rewatch it later. Or I guess that would be "watch" it, instead of just listening.

The Americans: This is a casual pose that I also engage in regularly.

Oh right: Here's a brief taste of my latest sewing project to remind you that this is a blog about sewing.

Do you ever have one of those moments when you realize literally everything is connected, or at least your brain makes crazy connections? I had one of those this morning on my way into work. Are you ready for it? 

I'm driving into work this morning, listening to the latest episode of My Favorite Murder. This is definitely one of My Favorite Podcasts and I listen to it often while sewing. On this episode, the hilarious hosts start talking about John Boy from The Waltons.

Good night, John Boy.

And all of a sudden my brain synapses start firing and I almost run off the road...BECAUSE all of a sudden I realize why this one character on The Americans looks so familiar.

He's still got it....and I'm talking about the mole.

It's John Boy! John Boy is Agent Gadd from The Americans! 

And THEN, I realize that....

...there is a prominent quilt displayed behind the main characters' bed on The Americans.

Is your mind blown yet?

Isn't it crazy how interconnected things are and, like, how Richard Thomas still has a career? You don't even know who I'm talking about because who would even know what John Boy, the actor's, name is unless you were doing a Google search trying to find pictures of him? 

Should I be worried that my primary form of communication is memes and pop culture references? No? Yes? Yes. Yes? Nah I'm fine.

Anywho, I've been working on a quilt for AAT's room. I usually choose bright colors for quilts and AAT already has a lot of color going on in her room so I purposefully went looking for a more muted color palette. She also has a lot of pattern going on in her room so I wanted to choose a more low-key, less shape-y pattern. I was suitably inspired by this quilt below, found on Beech Tree Lane Handmade.

via Beech Tree Lane Handmade

In my infamous shopping trip to JoAnn, I had picked up some Cloud 9 Organics Cotton, all I believe from the Cirrus line. Colors are, I think, Ash (Greige color), Shadow (Gray), Ocean (Navy), Rain (light blue), Petal (light pink), and Lilac (light purple - not pictured).

From this raw material I will create a passable quilt.

Beech Tree Lane Handmade had a great tutorial on making Half Square Triangles in bulk, which was critical for this pattern. I followed the instructions to make 8 at a time, and then I followed the instructions from another tutorial online to make the hourglasses.

I knew I was making a Twin-sized quilt, so I needed to do math to figure out how to do 70"x90" and also to make the most of my half-yard cuts of the colors.

I started with the half yard assumption -- what is the biggest square I can cut out of a 44" wide x 18" tall piece of fabric? I figured out I could cheat two 18"x18" squares and then have enough left over to do any extra pieces I needed to create to fill in the blanks.

Using the super helpful size guide:

You have to take into account that with each time you sew and cut, you're losing half an inch in seams. I figured out that if I cut 2 - 18" squares, that would mean I would have 8 - 8.5" HSTs, with a finished size of 8" for each hourglass. That meant when it was sewn into the quilt with .25" seams, each final hourglass would measure 7.5". That meant I needed to have 10 squares wide and 12 squares tall.

7.5" * 10 = 75" wide

7.5" * 12 = 90" tall

Once the math was out of the way (or "maths" as my British readers would write), I got to cutting and sewing, while The Americans kept me company.

Through the magic of the Internet, all my hours of hard work are complete within the blink of an eye and I had a fat stack of each color. 

I had to go back to JoAnn to get more fabric, and picked up the lilac then, so that's why the purple color isn't in this picture. I initially did the math all wrong for how much fabric I needed because I haven't taken a math class since 11th grade and also my reading comprehension skills are low while I'm fabric shopping so I misread the full-size mattress size as the full-size quilt size. 

I laid it out to get an idea of what it would look like. I wasn't loving the mixed up look for my own version so I decided to make "stars" of each color. In the pic below I hadn't quite gotten straight how I needed to rotate the hourglass blocks to get the pattern right. Thank god I figured that out before I started piecing it together.

But don't worry -- I'll make plenty of other mistakes to make up for it!

I put this project away for a bit and when I came back to it I laid it all out on the floor to decide on a pattern and then started sewing it together. But then it couldn't stay on the kitchen floor because cats and toddler and life and I wasn't done sewing it so I very cleverly* folded it all together in a manner that I would never remember later and I also very cleverly* did NOT take a picture of it before I did this.

*

And that's where I am now. I laid it out again tonight and have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER how I had it laid out originally.

I took a picture of part of the area I had sewed already just to give you, gentle blog reader, an idea of what it will look like. Figuring this out is a battle for another night!