A Quilt Comes Together

As a result of yesterday’s post, I learned a few new things about some of my Montana friends. Two of them love drum corps and one of them grew up in an Anglican church singing “Lead Me, Lord.” (And her mother was the organist.) Music brings people together.

What else unites—not divides—us?

We’re heating back up here, with temps into the upper 80s and low 90s for the next week. I anticipate additional sewing time, especially in the afternoons. I know that’s not as hot as other parts of the country, but it’s hot for us. The tomatoes, cantaloupes, and watermelon will love it. Me, not so much.

I ran across an interesting post the other day on the Vintage Sewing Machines blog. This woman lives in the UK and writes a lot of great technical pieces on vintage sewing machine repair. She has an Adler 87 sewing machine from 1930 with proprietary needles and bobbins, neither of which can be readily sourced. Her solution was to order a batch of 3D-printed bobbins. She has been using them with great success, but because of a recent heat wave, the bobbins have swollen slightly and are jamming the machine.

A cautionary tale for anyone thinking of getting sewing machine parts 3D-printed.

I went to town Friday to run errands—most of the idiot drivers seemed to be elsewhere, thank goodness—and stopped at the quilt store north of town to fondle fabric. I walked over to the rack of Kona and noted that they still didn’t have any black, but as I turned around, I spotted a bolt hiding on the floor next to the rack. A bolt of black Kona. With a note on it saying that the store was limiting the amount each customer could purchase to a few yards.

I hustled up to the cutting table, the bolt lovingly cradled in my arms, and asked for my limit. “Ah,” said the lady at the cutting table. “I see you found the black Kona. That bolt just arrived yesterday.” (It was already half gone.)

I am using the American Made Brand black cotton on this Noon and Night quilt. It is nice to work with and it would not be a hardship if that were the only black cotton I had available. (Having to use an alternative black cotton definitely qualifies as a first-world quilting problem.) However, there is something about the way Kona feels, which is why I have an entire dresser full of it in my sewing room.

I finished the last of 42 Noon and Night blocks yesterday. While I liked the half-drop setting that my friend Kate suggested, the blocks still felt crowded to me. I could have added some sashing and still used a half-drop setting, but I am balancing quilt design with quilt pattern writing and thought that might get too complicated to explain. Just because I can lay it out with relative ease in EQ8 does not mean that I can write directions to do so in real life.

[I know of one quilt book released recently that has a lot of errors in it, and it seems to be because the designs were done in computer software without sufficient real-world testing. Computer-aided design is just that—the computer is “aiding” the design process, not replacing it.]

I took all the blocks off the design wall and put them back up in a straight setting. The difference was immediate—almost as if all 42 blocks were letting out a sigh of relief. I’ve learned to listen to what the quilt wants. This quilt wants a plain old straight setting.

I am now cutting narrow sashing strips and adding them between the blocks. I did two of the seven rows last night before stopping:

I haven’t yet decided if there will be cornerstones on the sashing between the rows or if the sashing will be plain black. I might have to wait and ask the quilt what it wants. And I have to start thinking about how I want this quilted. My friend Tera is coming by this afternoon. I am sure she would let me borrow her longarm to quilt this, but in that case, I’d probably do an allover design. The other option is to sub it out to a professional longarmer and have them do something custom. I am willing to pay extra for custom quilting, but the issue is the additional time that would take. I’ll have to think about that some more (and see what the quilt wants).

What a journey this quilt design has been.