Faking It While Making It

Like most people I use a pattern to make a garment.  When I first started sewing I followed a pattern to the letter.  Now they're more like a guideline.  A quick glance and I'm into the project.

Enter quilting.  I'm relatively new to the craft.  I made a baby quilt during my first beginner class.  It was a traditional nine-patch Irish chain pattern in red, yellow and blue.  I like primary colors for babies.  Since there were no babies coming along for a while I put my newly learned quilting skills on the back burner.

My granddaughter entered the world in 2002 and I found a pattern that had a large teddy bear in the center where I could just use simple strips as a border.

A few more babies were born and I developed a pattern where I could display their names and all the pertinent birth information.

 Now I'm out of babies and I've joined the Modern Quilt Guild (online), the Modern Atlanta Quilters Guild (an occasional trip to Atlanta), and the Modern Athens Quilt Guild here in Athens.  I get to make full sized quilts.

My friend Marybeth gave me a jelly roll (Forty 2-1/2" by width of fabric strips).  I just put them in my stash for later use.

Last weekend I went to look at them and all of a sudden I was making a quilt.  I have been wanting to try a tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company by Three Dudes Quilting.  I sewed six strips together and cut them in the appropriate squares.  When I had enough squares I started arranging them for a potential quilt.  No matter how I set them I wasn't happy.  It looked too quilty.  I know that's a word because it's a magazine.  What to do?


Still being relatively new to all the rules of quilting I chose a pattern from Generation Q magazine  that I thought would work.  It's called "Doppelganger" by Thomas Knauer.  I love his fabric designs!  In fact I will be using his Thesaurus line for one of my next quilts.

I'm sure this pattern is expertly written but it all looked Greek to me.  I mostly followed the pictures.

To start off with, his squares were 4" and mine were 8".  I didn't intend to use the same colors as his quilt but I needed a color for the background and since I'm not much of a green or brown fan so I chose to match the purple.

Here are the strips where I could follow his pattern.

 There was lots of ripping and maneuvering while trying to set the strips on a diagonal.  I ran into the problem of chopping off the jelly roll or dark purple squares getting it into quilt size.   The grand kids thought it was hilarious that I had a shower curtain taped to my floor (aka design wall) so I could square the quilt.

Here's a picture of the finished top.  Of course it will look totally different when it's quilted and I promise to have a better picture.  The back will be an orchid color to match one of the flowers in the strips and it will be pieced with my own pattern.

Who knows what will happen this weekend.  I just pulled out some fabric I bought during the pre-Christmas sales at Sewcial Studio.

Or there's the jelly roll I bought after an Atlanta guild meeting.

 

Let's hope I'm not turning into one of those quilters who has lots of quilt tops waiting to be finished.  I will take the challenge from last night's Modern Athens Quilts meeting to make progress on what we showed at the meeting for next month.  There, it's in print now so it has to come true.