In case you missed my earlier announcement ...
I have some large quilty deadlines looming on the horizon. The smart (grown-up? sane?) thing to do is step back from this space for a bit. So I’m going to take off the rest of March and all of April. I expect to be back in early May, right in time to celebrate 10 years of blogging, with new posts and finishes for you. Until then, happy sewing!
A show of hands, please: Who among you loves a good pieced back?
Me, too! Sometimes you will find me using a wideback (remember these ladybugs?), but it’s a rare occurrence, because for me, a pieced back is an opportunity to use up some fabric—fat quarters or yardage—that might otherwise linger in my stash.
My tried-and-true approach to piecing a backing is this: I take a cut of fabric that is the length required by the project, I cut it lengthwise, and then I fill in that space with enough fabric to create the width required. Here’s an example, on the back of my Rain or Shine quilt (you can see additional pictures illustrating this technique here) ...
There are times, however, when I’ve mixed things up a bit with good results.
Take the back side of my Norway quilt as an example. I didn’t like this block enough to place it on the front, but set here on the back, it becomes something special ...
An unused panel became the focal point of my Square Deal quilt back, with equally great results ...
I wish I could say my pieced backs are always a success. This is not the case. In fact, I seem to create problems for myself when I try to do anything fancier or more fiddly.
Take, for example, the back of my Lotus Blossom quilt. The quilt front featured fabrics that suited the recipients’ taste but not my own. I knew if I didn’t use them on the back, I wouldn’t use them at all. A few math mistakes created problems for me, and I ended up with a backing that is not my style ...
I found myself in a comparable situation recently, shown in the picture at the top of the post. (I have yet to reveal the top of this particular project.) My goal, as usual, was to use up as much fabric as I could. In this case, however, some of that fabric was 2.5-inch squares. The process was more fiddly than I had hoped, and the result is OK but not awesome. To me, the way the pieced swath cuts off at the edges of the quilt looks like a mistake. There is something to be said for big chunks of fabric on a back, I think.
The moral of my pieced-back story is this: The simpler the plan for a pieced backing, the better. I spend less time thinking and sewing a pieced back—and like the results more!—when I keep the approach straightforward.
Friends, I have some large quilty deadlines looming on the horizon. The smart (grown-up? sane?) thing to do is step back from this space for a bit. So I’m going to take off the rest of March and all of April. I expect to be back in early May, right in time to celebrate 10 years of blogging, with new posts and finishes for you. Until then, happy sewing!
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| Irish Twist in Strawberry Lemonade by Sherri and Chelsi |
I have had Saint Patrick’s Day on my mind lately. In part, that is because March 17 is on the horizon and I live outside of Boston, where the holiday is a big thing. I’ve also started a second listen to the Last Seen podcast, which documents the theft of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
If you’re unfamiliar with that story, in the wee hours of March 18, 1990, and in the wake of Saint Patrick’s Day festivities, two men posing as Boston Police made their way into the museum, tied up the night guards, and stole 13 irreplaceable—and still unrecovered—works of art. It’s a fascinating story, in part because the burglary was so brazen and so easily accomplished. (You can read more about the theft here.)
And the third reason I’ve been thinking about all things Irish lately is that I’ve been wanting to make another Irish Twist quilt. This design, following in the long Irish chain tradition, spotlights the space in between the chains to make a uniquely modern quilt.
I’ve had an Irish Twist project in Aneela Hoey’s Sherbet Pips collection cut and ready to be sewn for months now, but there are so many awesome collections out this spring. I couldn’t help but mock up Irish Twist in a few of Moda’s latest lines.
I think my favorite is the version in Strawberry Lemonade (by Sherri and Chelsi), at the top of the post. Those colors and prints are so spring-y; they have me wishing away these last few weeks of winter. Old Glory (by Lella Boutique), directly below, is the most "me" of the collections. I love red and blue together, but I think I’d put those prints to work in something with a Fourth of July feel.
The third mockup surprises me the most. I tend to be rather blue-averse (when asked for my color preference the last time I bought a car, I asked for the color not-blue!). But Water, a collaborative collection from Ruby Star Society, goes all in with blue, and I like it!
These three mockups were made possible by EQ8, and experimenting with them scratched a creative itch for me. What do you do when you want to play with fabric but don’t have the time in your quilty schedule to take on a new project?
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| Irish Twist in Old Glory by Lella Boutique |
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| Irish Twist in Water by Ruby Star Society |
I am a pretty disciplined person. I start what I finish. I make messes, but I also clean them up. I like completing projects and crossing things off my to-do lists. It’s just the way I’m hard wired. Every so often, however, I procrastinate.
A case from the archives: my Gypsy Wife quilt. I think anyone who’s tackled that pattern will attest to the sheer number of decisions a Gypsy Wife requires and the challenge of following the instructions. Yet, I started out 2022 with the goal of finishing my quilt before the end of the year, and I had it pieced, quilted, and bound in March 2022—nine months ahead of schedule!
All of this is to say that deadlines work for me. I don’t assign one to every project—that would make quilting feel more like a job than a joy to me—but when it’s hard getting something over the finish line, it’s time to look at the calendar and come up with a reasonable timeline.
Here are some truths that I’ve discovered in this journey from WIP to finish. Do any of them ring true for you?
When I pick up a long-procrastinated project, I am almost always further along than I remember. It’s a nice surprise and, I think, shows how once an item is relegated to the back burner, its challenges grow in my mind.
When I picked up my Gypsy Wife in January 2022, I was surprised with how far along I was with block construction. Did I still have a bunch to do? Sure, but I gave myself an entire year to wrap it up, and I was bragging about the finish in a blog post here just 12 weeks later.
I will never be a one-project-at-a-time gal. I like the variety that having multiple projects going at one time offers, and I enjoy the process of creating (not just finishing) as a result. There’s nothing wrong with putting down a project with the intent of picking it up again in the future, but if that practice becomes a cycle that doesn’t result in a finish, it become a time suck for me.
Case in point: my Sandhill Sling, which is pictured above and below (and originally blogged about here). I started sewing my sling back in September 2023. I was very, very far along in the process when I realized a detail on the front was every-so-slightly off (I’m literally talking about adjusting something an eighth of an inch, friends). Multiple times in the months that followed, I picked up the project, read the pattern, determined what fixing this minor detail would entail, watched a video about finishing the bag, and decided I didn’t have the (emotional?) bandwidth to finish the bag.
That cost me! I wonder how much time I wasted processing the pattern information, putting the project aside, and then repeating the process a month or two later.
In the end, I assigned a deadline for the sling: I was going to finish it in time to take it to QuiltCon 2024. With that in mind, I reassessed the eighth-inch mistake and decided to live with it. Then I proceeded to watch that video yet again, hand-basted the lining, and attached that lining to the exterior with my machine. After that, I realized that the bag was too small for my QuiltCon needs and left it at home. But hey, I finished my bag!
Do you know what I think I can accomplish after tackling a long-procrastinated sewing project. Anything! Bring on the Y-seams, the curves, the free-motion quilting ... I just finished a WIP! Do not underestimate the power in that (and how much a brain enjoys the accompanying jolt of dopamine)!
So what’s lurking in your closet or under your sewing machine table that needs to be finished?!