Quilting is in my Blood

Bernie with Needle & Foot is hosting a great linky party/discussion about quilting blunders. I agree with Bernie that when looking at social media posts that show other people’s masterpieces, it can be so easy to compare ourselves with others and feel that our work is not skilled enough, prolific enough, intricate enough, etc.

 I, too, have made my fair share of quilting mishaps. Unfortunately I don’t have photographs of my goofs. Just this past weekend I was making some half-square triangles for a couple of bee blocks and decided to use Lee Heinrich’s paper-pieced Perfect HSTs that don’t require any trimming. Well, they would have been perfect if I had used the right size! I used 2.5” finished instead of 2” finished, so after ripping off the paper, I got to spend some extra time trimming down my HSTs! I’ve learned the most important thing to do after discovering a mistake is to say “oh well” (or some other expression if necessary!) and then to focus my energy on fixing the problem rather than beating myself up for the mistake.

I’ve been quilting for over four years, and I use my seam ripper on a frequent basis. At first I didn’t understand why many quilters would talk about “unpicking” their seams. But that’s exactly what I do at some point with all of my major projects if I’ve veered off at the end of a seam, have a flipped seam allowance, or haven’t matched a point to my “good enough” standard. I’ve seen videos on ripping seams really fast with seam rippers, and I tried that once, and not only ripped my seam but also ripped my fabric!

I really could go on and on about all my quilting snafus, but I’ve found that a little time and distance goes a long ways to being okay with my mistakes and sometimes even embracing them. My favorite all time project is my Summer Sampler 2017 quilt, and when I discovered that there was some color variation in my Kona Coal background fabric, I was NOT happy and was upset with myself for not buying all of the background fabric at one time because I had heard that there can be color variations in dye lots, which I can attest is true! And there are several less-than-perfect paper-pieced center joins where many points meet, and I just don’t care. I love this quilt, and it still makes me feel happy when I look at it.

If there are any new quilters reading this post, my advice is to use social media for inspiration and to help you really figure out what you’re drawn to and where you want to focus your energies. But be kind to yourself and don’t expect to be perfect. It truly is more about the journey than the destination!

It is my turn to be the March Queen Bee for our IG HoneyBees 2019 swarm, and I’ve chosen the Treasure Hunt block by Alyce@ Blossom Heart Quilts. I’ve loved this block since Ophelie chose it for her Stash Bee hive members to make blocks that she used to make a comfort quilt for her terminally ill father in 2017. Please take a look at her Stash Bee post, read her story and see photos of her beautiful quilt. This is a fairly simple paper-pieced block. The colors that I have chosen are dark pink, medium or dark grey, mustard, teal, and aqua. Below is a photo that shows four sections for a block that have not been sewn together.

The reason that they are not sewn together is that I also don’t want my swarm members to sew their blocks together either. I would like my swarm members to send me the four sections of their blocks, and then I will create a scrappy quilt by making blocks out of different people’s 6 1/2” sections.

Each section is divided into six segments. I’ve made a choice to have two dark pink segments and would prefer two different dark pink fabrics be used in the block to increase the scrappy factor.

The colors of two sections for each block (the left side of the above photo) go as follows:

• A3 Dark Pink
• A2 Medium or Dark Grey
• A1 Mustard
• A4 Dark Pink (a different dark pink than A3 if possible)
• A5 Aqua
• A6 Teal

The colors of the other two sections for each block (the right side of the above photo) go as follows:

• A3 Dark Pink
• A2 Medium or Dark Grey
• A1 Mustard
• A4 Dark Pink (a different dark pink than A3 if possible)
• A5 Teal
• A6 Aqua

In order to create the Treasure Hunt “X” the sections need to be oriented as shown in the photo below:

So far I have paper-pieced a total of 16 sections. Below is a pic of the sections mixed up to form four scrappy blocks. The alternating teal and aqua diamonds are created by alternating the teal and aqua colors in the A5 and A6 sections.

A Few Tips to Help with This Block

1. When the pattern template is downloaded, there are  directions on how big to cut strips for each segment. I think the 2 1/4” width works fine for segments A1, A2, A4, and A5, but I recommend cutting the strips for the A3 and the A6 segments a little wider. I found that 2 1/2” strips for A3 and A6 worked better for me.
2. You can always use wider widths and longer lengths of fabric than what is suggested because the extra fabric will be trimmed off.
3. An inexpensive metal ruler to fold the paper is extremely useful.
4. I would not even attempt to paper piece without this Add-A-Quarter Ruler.
5. I have found that the Treasure Hunt templates that I printed from my iPad were undersized, but the ones I printed from my laptop where I can scale the printing at 100% were the correct size. The templates should be exactly 6 1/2” which includes the seam allowance.

I’m really looking forward to getting happy mail this month and hopefully turning these scrappy blocks into a finished quilt this summer.