Making

 

 

I've been working on a little Christmas quilt project that was supposed to be quick and easy. It has been easy but not all that quick.

 

I found a couple of charm packs that I liked, a pattern that seemed simple enough, and got going. It takes a long time to cut your fabric up into little bits and then sew all those little bits back together. This particular pattern called for laying out all the charm squares and rearranging them until I had it looking like I wanted it to and then sewing sashing and squares first one way into rows, then sewing sashing onto all the rows and then sewing rows together.

 

Which is great and seemed like an easy way to do it. Except I wanted the quilt to be bigger than the 36 x 48 that the pattern yielded, so there was extra time spent figuring and cutting and laying out. And I had to leave it all laid out like I wanted it to end up so that I would remember what I am doing because the squares are sewn together on point. Which means that every row has a different number of squares, the side-setting triangles are oriented differently from one end of a row to the other, and all the while you have to maintain the placement of your squares. I couldn't figure out an easy way to make that into a neat and tidy little stack that would sit quietly next to my sewing machine and still have it come out okay - it had to remain all laid out on the floor. I'm glad I have no furniture in my front room so that there is plenty of space to lay out things like quilt blocks and not have to move them again for days and days.

 

I'm getting there. The top is nearly finished. I really like it, but I need to figure out a way to remember that it - whatever IT is - always takes longer than I think it will.

 

It could be the title of my life-story: It Always Took Her Longer Than She Thought It Would.