Lessons learned

Well.  I called it.

I finished the top in three days.  It would have been two, but I forced myself to slow down.

Interesting tidbit from the construction which I did not encounter in the other quilts; when designing and cutting, add ~10% to the overall size of the quilt.  When I laid out all my blocks for this quilt, it measured 46" x 52".  When I finished construction, it measured 41" x 47".  I lost five inches all the way around.  I basically lost an entire row and column to seam allowance. Needless to say, the quilt is a bit smaller than I intended.

Lesson learned.  



This past weekend I bought the backing and the wadding.  The backing was an easy trip to the haberdashery department.  The wadding was a different story.  I had it delivered and the postman had an issue with ringing my doorbell to actually deliver the goods.

Apparently, there was a dog in front of our house which kept him from ringing the bell and delivering said packet.  However, the dog didn't prevent him from taking time to write out this card and stick it through the mail slot IN MY FRONT DOOR.  The mail slot which is just beneath the doorbell.  I ask you.

So, yesterday, on my due date, I walked a mile down the hill to the depot, picked up my wadding, and walked a mile back up the hill (and Pruin still hasn't made an appearance) because the postman was too scared to walk past this 'dog' to ring the bell, but was okay walking past it to stuff this note, along with junkmail, through my door.  FYI, we don't have a dog.

Anyway...

All that's left now is assembly.



Coincidentally, I cracked the code on how I could justify to myself the use of all these new materials when my brief is to re-use stuff.  I know you were all really concerned with this breach of procedure but rest assured I have a solution.

In the spirit of lessons learned, I am planning to re-use a technique I kind of 'made-up' in my first quilt.  I learned something in my first quilt that I am going to purposefully re-do here with similar, yet different, results.  Obviously, this happens in every quilt I make to some degree.  We're always learning from what we have done previously, whether we realize it or not, but here I am very consciously pulling on a very specific technique.

Coincidentally again, this justification aligns really well with some theoretical arguments I made in my doctoral thesis three years ago about the passing on of performance skills.  I won't lie.  It's a little bit comforting all that theoretical work isn't going completely to waste.

That's all fine and dandy (I hear you saying) but what is the technique?  What is the relevance?

If you recall, I only quilted the back side of my t-shirt quilt.  This was due to the two sides being completely different designs and not wanting to obscure the t-shirts on the front half but wanting to add some visual interest to the huge blocks of offending florescent colour on the back.  This time around I am also only quilting one side of the quilt.  I will quilt the top and leave the back untouched.

Here's why.  The back of this quilt is to be made of vinyl.  Sounds kinky, but it is for a specific purpose.  This quilt is earmarked as ground cover for Pruin when we head to the park this summer.  If you have any experience with the 'great British summer' you will know that the ground can be counted upon to be damp more often than not.  So I am making the back of this quilt wipeable/waterproof.  To that end, I don't want to put holes in the vinyl with quilting.

I'm also not completely confident in my machine's ability to stitch vinyl.  The final part of assembly may have to occur at my local sewing shop's quilting club where I can utilize their equipment and expertise.  Which again, will offer the opportunity to learn a skill/technique and make it my own in this particular quilt.


The quilt may be made of all new materials but that just makes the passing on of technique and skill and performance that much clearer.  With this quilt the story isn't in the fabric or in the future memories.  From the lesson of seam allowance to one-sided quilting to using a new machine, this quilt's story is about the discovery and re-using and re-honing of skill and technique.