When your only goal is to clean up some little bits of fabric leftover from another project you don’t expect to launch in to sewing an epic quilt. In truth, most of my quilts start with zero intention of being a finished quilt. Rather, it is just something to sew at that time; some experiment to try; some play to improve my mood. So when I had those leftover red squares from this quilt I just sewed them together with some low volume scraps so that they wouldn’t go to waste or get lost. I had no plans, no design, no lofty goals.
But…
They did look quite good together. And what if you sewed two pairs to each other? Oh look at that cute 4 patch! Hmm, there might be something to this…
Reader, there was. I started adding turquoise, then green 4 patches. Those colours look great together and it was all so cheerful. Of course I have a tonne of low volume scraps so I could use them up too. So now I made a 4 patch of two 4 patches. Oh boy, this was getting good!
One thing led to another, one block led to another, and even though I sewed a whole pile of blocks I still had no clue where this was heading. Sure, it would be a quilt one day, but just how far was I going to go?
Quite often I just sew until I get bored. Then the quilt is as big as that many blocks, give or take a few. I use what I made to puzzle together something (hopefully) cool. In this case I reached a point where some actual planning was required. Since I don’t like to make small quilts I did some math and even sketched out the layout to see where I needed to finish. This was my guide for sewing.
Most of the blocks were made as leaders and enders while making other quilts. I kept a bowl of the coloured scraps and a bowl of the low volume scraps by my machine and sewed a pair together at the end of any other seam. These would pile up until I felt motivated to press them. Then I would make the 4 patches as the next round of leaders and enders. At some point these would get both pressed and squared up. That required more motivation because I was squaring them up to 2” by 2”. Tedious work. Then those would get sewn to a low volume square in the next round. Pressing again then the last seam to join two of those pairs together. Usually by the last step I was doing some dedicated sewing on these blocks instead of leaders and enders. It was all very reminiscent of this.
Eventually I became dedicated to finishing all the blocks. If I had started this quilt with the end goal in mind I can honestly say I wouldn’t have started. This was a very tedious make. Don’t get me wrong, I believe all the effort was worthwhile and any time sewing is time well spent. But when you make a quilt from small pieces it can be nearly impossible to see the end from the beginning. Like climbing a mountain when you have no idea just how high it is. Or deciding to swim across the lake without knowing how far it really is. It’s all possible, but it is going to take some time to see the final achievements. So even though I had a specific plan and number of blocks needed, it was hard, in the years I’ve had this quilt ongoing, to see the finish. Glad to be here now. Real glad.
Now that the quilt top is done I will probably get it quilted fairly soon. It isn’t impatience that motivates me, it is a desire to not have to press this quilt top again. That was a lot of seam management there!
Oh, and for those wondering, the quilt top finishes at 63” x 81”.