LESSONS

I have given a lot of thought lately about why I tend to choose such complex designs to try to replicate in miniature. Some people are extremely talented at some things.  I have seen wonderful tiny lone stars.  Of course I know that practice makes perfect, and maybe I don't practice enough.  I have make a single lone star that finished at  about 9" and then this one.  But, I have thrown away enough to make a second quilt.
Anyway, I'm toiling away on this and it isn't even for a competition.  It is for a little exhibit that my friends and I are doing with our miniature red and white and/ or blue and white quilts.  I'm scrambling to get finished because I found out that the installation is on May 8th. I thought that we had another month.  So I stopped doing all of my distraction projects, and finished up the last two blocks.. then is when I started having trouble

This is what I had intended to do with the sashing.  I love it, but I didn't read my project journal notes, and didn't sew 'scant' seams on the last two blocks.  Which then in turn were enough smaller than the first two that they were a problem when it came to getting the pieced sashing and cornerstones to work.  They look awful.. especially the center nine patch.  So.....

This really hurt.  I had this whole idea in my mind about what I wanted.. but I think that I will just attempt to make it in a larger size some time.

Anyway, I had to figure out how I could lay it out and fudge the difference in sizes. Easier to do without pieced sashing.  Luckily, I am pretty good at doing Y-seams if I do say so myself.  The hardest part was figuring out what sizes of replacement blocks I would need to pull it all together. I am going to piece all of the outer edge blocks and save the center square for last. Of course this means that I will have to mark it and do special quilting.  Ugh.  My least favorite thing to do.

I mentioned to my friend that I kept a project journal.  I have kept a journal on every competition quilt that I have made.  It also has some pages with future ideas and fabric swatches.  I have only entered one wall size art quilt, and that was just done without a plan.  My miniatures are always more complex if not with design, then with color placement so I kept a journal so I would know what I did, so I didn't repeat the mistake.  I write what I learn as I go along to use with future projects.  I couldn't find my competition journal, but this is the one that I am doing now.

For the final vortex design, I put in a tracing of the wedge pattern that I finally came up with, and a photo of the samples.  I haven't completely finished the quilt so I haven't finished up this entry.  The photo on the bottom is of my lone star project.  I glued in a discard block, rather than toss it out.  I sometimes put swatches, and if I know what they are, I write that, maybe how much fabric I used.  Sometimes I keep track of the time I spend, but with my last competition miniature it got into the hundreds of hours and I got tired of keeping track.. I write useless stuff like what tv shows I watch, books I listened to while I worked.  Just stuff to look back on.  A lot of it useful, some of it not.

I really love making miniature quilts, they can be challenging and exasperating, but I just love doing it to myself..