You would think with all the yakking that I do about sewing, that I have made a few patchwork quilts in my time.
In my teens I started a quilt where you make and stuff individual squares before sewing them together - this is still in it's have-I-got-enough-squares? stage in a cupboard. A couple of years ago I made a patchwork cushion cover but through lack of brain engagement, the fabrics were awful and the finished item looked like it had been made by a one armed blind person - I gave that to my mother to give to jumble.
And then we get to Lila Tueller. Or more precisely the quilt top I made with Lila Tueller's Santorini fabrics way back at the beginning of the year. I went out and got some wadding, and even a fleece blanket from Ikea to use as a backing, and then it just sat in the spare room and then in the blanket chest. And sat. And sat. Poor Lila - what an injustice.
And that's it. One and two half quilts if you're feeling generous.
I think a couple of things went wrong with the Lila Tueller and it took me nearly the whole year to realise them. Firstly, there is no delineation between the different prints so the finished article in smack!-in-your-face colourful (admittedly I was dubious about this in February but couldn't work out why). I should have put a frame of plain colour around each square to give the eye some room to recover. And secondly, the 'wadding' I got was that thick polyester stuff (which was all my LFS had) but was just too much of a fight to work with.
But anyway, the Dublin Knitting and Stitch Show came to the rescue and I got some proper cotton quilting wadding on the spur of the moment. And over the weekend, I laid everything out on the floor and started to pin it together. The quilt top is about 36 x 50" so it's not something that can be pinned on any table I possess. My bump is nearly 6 months old (or perhaps I should say, 6 months large) and my god, did I feel like a bloated whale crawling around on the floor pinning.
I should say here that I generally don't feel particularly whale-like (yet) and don't actually think I'm that much fatter (at least in kgs) than I was before I started my diet in the spring.
And what made it all the more annoying was that the quilt top wouldn't pin square (there was a horrible curve to one long edge) so I ended up trying to pin it three times (more crawling, more whaling) before I gave up in uncomfortable exasperation.
So it spent last night pinned out damp and blocking on the spare bed. Hah! if you can do it to knitting, you can do it to a quilt.
I am still in two minds about the in-your-face-ness of the whole thing but frankly, I can't be bothered to take it apart and if I do, I'm pretty sure I will never sew it together again (based on my quilting history to date). So I'm viewing this as a learning experience.
I will, of course, be doing another stint of whaling around on the floor which I can't say I'm looking forward to, but hopefully I will now only have to pin things once and at the end of it I will have a straight sided quilt that is ready to finish.
This might possibly merit a small hurrah. Or at least some relief that it's finally done. We'll see...
