Flattened

Oh Folks.  I am exhausted.  And not from all the quilting.

I did get a little over-zealous and went on a bit of a quilting binge, but now I am tired.

Also, we are moving this weekend and the stress of moving into our own home is overwhelming.  More so, because we ran out of boxes about two thirds of the way through the kitchen.

So while I am flattened physically, my quilt is also flattened.  I learned the lesson of ironing.

This is one of those lessons we all know in theory, but don’t necessarily heed until we learn the hard way.  I didn’t iron any of the top sections while piecing.  I know.  Especially stupid considering t-shirts are not the most obliging of materials.  The wonkiness (that’s an official term) produced by not ironing is obvious in the slight slant in each section.

However, on the back, I learned my lesson.  Working with tiny, curly strips of jersey was impossible without sewing.  After ironing the pieces already pieced, I found that I tend to sew my seams on a slight arc.  No matter how diligently I pin, the result is a slight arc.  Of course I didn’t realize this until I flattened everything out.

I started to mark the route, as it were, in an attempt to get back to the straight lines I achieved in that very first section.  It feels a bit like going backwards, like putting the training wheels back on after learning to go it alone.

One of the reason I hadn’t ironed was that I don’t have the square footage in my flat to layout a quilt and iron it in the same space.  I have taken to quilting in the front room, which means rolling back the carpet, setting the machine up on the credenza and the ironing board out in the hall.  Not a flowing system, but it worked.

Sewing the back became a bit of an obsession with me.  As with most obsessions, I was operating in a bit of a vacuum.  Not on purpose, just due to the sheer ‘present mindful-ness’ that quilting brought to me.
It wasn’t until I was almost done that I even thought about how this back might translate to the front when it came to the actual quilting part.  These sections are oriented vertically, but with horizontal strips.  The front sections are separate squares, neither vertically or horizontally.  How will the quilt stitching look cutting across the front?  Or should the front serve as the guide? These are questions I have yet to answer.

Once the scraps were cleared and the three sections ironed and laid out in its tape outline, I realized it wasn’t quite wide enough.  In fact, some pieces within the sections were significantly skinnier than their surrounding pieces.

How did that happen?

More importantly, what to do about it?

Now all the wrinkles are flattened out, the flaws are becoming more and more evident.  Corners I thought meeting up in nice squares missing just enough not to look intentional, just mis-calculated.  Do I rip out the seams and try again?  Or do I leave it as a lesson?

Flurried, obsessive bouts of sewing are enjoyable, but mindful, patient, practice results in more satisfactory product.

Right now, I am just too tired to undo it.  The perfectionist in me will have to let it go.  A lesson learned.

That and ironing.