Gimme Gimme More...Quilts

Gimme More Quilts, lyrics

Every time the kiddo goes down
Right into the sewing room I run
It's full of quilting cotton
I cut it up and sew it back together again

I'm sewing all night while there is no daylight
(I'll keep on quiltin')
(just keep on quiltin')

I'm going through thread when I should be abed
(My Brother's rockin')
(The stitches lockin')

But my mind keeps sayin':

Gimme, Gimme more
Gimme, More
Gimme, Gimme, More
Gimme, Gimme more
Gimme, More
Gimme, Gimme, More
Gimme, Gimme more
Gimme, More
Gimme, Gimme, More
Gimme, Gimme more
Gimme, More
Gimme, Gimme, More....

QUILTS

Some people like pole dancing, and others like quilting. What can I say? I'm one of the latter.

Also, nobody enjoys pole dancing. It's degrading and ridiculous, and it wouldn't exist if we didn't live in a disgusting, sexist culture where women are just objects.

So anyways, I've been doing a lot of quilting. Quilting is so satisfying! I've never made a dud quilt. Oh, I may have to unstitch a little bit now and then, but it always works out. And quilting is definitely more of a flow activity because of all the repetitive sewing and cutting, unlike a garment where each step is pretty unique.

Here's a story of my latest quilt, and only my latest quilt, because my quilts each deserve their own post. 

I was putzing around my sewing room one night after work, looking for a project. I have plenty of options, in fact I had created a whole list of projects I should be working on. I created a mental kanban board of my projects and noted which ones were blocked by things like no batting, or waiting for an order of binding fabric to arrive. 

Other projects' blockers were more mental in nature. Like babu's Halloween costume, which I need a weekend for, and the king-size quiltstrosity that I committed myself to and needed a break from.

In looking for a project, I had lots of stash fabric to choose from. A few months ago I had ordered a bunch of Cool Scrap Packs from Hawthorne Threads. They were on sale for $6.99 (still are as of today) and so I indulged in like six....or seven of them.

My pretties, displayed in color groupings.

[I have a problem. OK? On Gretchen Rubin's Overbuyer/Underbuyer spectrum I'm 1050% Overbuyer. I just figured that I wanted enough to mix and match. It's like 2 yards of fabric for $7, which is insane! Insane, I tell you.]

There were definitely a few pieces in there that I wasn't a huge fan of, mostly because they didn't fit in with the rest of the scraps or my personal tastes. But overall I was really digging the selection -- it definitely included a lot of stuff I would never go out of my way to buy but that are really handy for quilting purposes and push me outside of my comfort zone.

I already completed one quilt top using the fabrics (sneak peak below)...

...and on the night in question, I was inspired to try a scrappier quilt than I normally create when I stumbled upon a pin for this gorgeous quilt on Pinterest.

What was really interesting about this quilt is that it didn't really focus on any particular pattern. All those white-background prints that I normally wouldn't know what to do with were actually perfect for this kind of a quilt.

I also pulled in a bunch of actual scraps I had leftover from previous projects since this project called for tiny 3" squares.

Night 1 was basically spent cutting. And cutting. And cutting. Because fo' realz, this quilt calls for 225 - 3" squares.

Just before heading off to bed, I threw some of my squares up on my design wall to get an idea of what it looked like and I was super pleased with how cute it looked. I know the gray and the purple stick out a little, but I liked how it broke things up and made the negative space areas look more pixellated. 

I kept working away on this quilt over the next few nights. Lots more time cutting. Lots. Then I spent a lot of time trying to make my arrangement really random, then I stood back, spent a lot of time looking at it, rearranging, etc.

What I watched: I caught up on "Z Nation" on Netflix throughout, and guys, George R. R. Martin makes a cameo!!

A note about my pictures: I know the colors look like crap. I need to up my photo game. But I do most of my sewing at night so I do most of my photo taking at night, and the overhead light in the room doesn't exactly make things look dewy or light and bright. Life is hard, I'm trying to get over it.

Above is my almost-final arrangement. I divided my sections into quilt blocks just to keep things neat.

And above is my final, sewn together quilt top.

Huzzah! I think it looks really pretty with all my cool blues and greens. I love the little pops of pink from the floral in there -- that one was a scrap from a quilt back on a previous project.

Now, if you'll recall these are 3" squares, so each final square was 2.5". 15 along each side is 37.5" square. That's not a big quilt. Almost as soon as I started cutting, I was like: 

...mostly because I knew this quilt was going to end up being a wall hanging vs. a bed or lap quilt. I briefly entertained the idea of adding a border around it to make it bigger, but it totally detracted from the scrappy look, and I was not into making 28 more blocks to surround the existing square.

Nonetheless, I'm very happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to quilt this and bind it because that's going to be the easy part! I'm thinking this will go in the master suite, over the bed. I need to decorate with my quilts more, because they are definitely going to start piling up as I continue to indulge in my quilt obsession.

Until next quilt,

Andrea