Sunday, April 3, 2011

Not All Ideas are Great

I became obsessed with an image of a potential quilt in my head after seeing this tutorial over at Lily's Quilts. But was I satisfied to do the cute little version she shows in her tutorial? Oh no, this girl decided to go big or go home. What a mistake that was!

So along I went, cutting my curves and piecing everything together, followed by lots and lots of ironing as suggested in the tutorial. And this is what I got...

A big lumpy unusable mess!

So back I go to the tutorial, re-read the instructions and see that I made a mistake in the ironing. I had ironed the seams both toward the thin strip like this...


...when I should have ironed them both the same direction like this...


Well what a difference that made! It didn't make it perfect, maybe about 50% better, but I think it is at least now workable.

I then made some leaves with veins...



So what do you think my plan is?

If you guessed something like this then you would be right...
I think I might even cut the outside into a wave shape to imitate the inside shape. It might help hide any imperfections. I am also hoping that the old adage, "Don't worry - it will quilt out" will be true in this case! I've been quilting for 18 years now and I'm usually a stickler for making sure that my quilts are flat and not wavy, but in this case I think I'm just going to go for it and see where it takes me.

And if all else fails, I made a mini-me version that has gentler curves and is nice and flat. You know me and my mini-quilts!

3 comments:

SO I'M Anna Fogg, an eclectic kinda gal said...

Ok, so I just read that you've been quilting for 18 yrs. Another sign? I started quilting prego with Noah, he is 17, that means it was 18 yrs ago. Hello!

Love, Love, Love the veins in the leaves! Very folksy-ish. And that robin's egg/teal/bluish color. Divine.

Maria Elkins said...

What you may need to do is to clip the seam allowances along the curves. See this link, http://cyberseams.com/article/105273/basics/how_to_clip_curves_on_a_seam_allowance.html

Once you do that, press the seams again. You should be able to get them flat after clipping curves.

Joanna said...

Maria, your email is set to no reply so I am replying to you here in the hope you will read it! I already had clipped the curves, right after I took the photos. Thank you for the suggestion though :) It's just the nature of sharp curves to not want to behave!