Sandi at Piecemeal Quilts wrote about taking the Process Pledge started by r0ssie. I realized that I've been showing a lot of finished projects but haven't wrote much about the process of making them.
I make many quick items and only write about them when they're finished. The hats and the fleece blankets are simple items, so there not that much to say about the process and a lot of it is the same from one hat (or blanket) to the next. But I'm going to work on writing something more interesting than "here's another hat I finished."
I brought a Simple Strips quilt kit home from our 3rd Sunday Project Linus group. I had the strips sewn together. Last week I got the giant strip set squared up and cross cut it into 3 pieces. I sewed 2 of the pieces together and finally realized that this monster was 70" long and only about 40" wide. The 5 strips of border fabric won't come close to going around that. And it's on the long and skinny side.
My size rule for throw quilts and security blankets is that the ratio of width to length should be between 1 to 1 and about 2 to 3. So 40" wide should be about 60" long. The narrow borders will add 4" to the width and length. So with borders it would be 44" x 74". The 2 to 3 ratio would be 44" x 66". I don't worry about a couple of inches, but this is 8" off.
The top has been in a timeout for the last week. I waited for the quilt top or my little voice to tell me what to do. I dreaded the prospect of ripping out a 70" seam. Should I leave it be or rip it apart and shorten it?
This morning it was still sitting there. Even though it's a donation quilt from a kit someone else created, I decided it was still sitting because I wouldn't be happy with the size to finish it as is. So while rewatching last night's NCIS and NCIS:Los Angeles season finales, I ripped seams.
I took off 2 of the aqua strips, shortening the strip set to about 63". By adding 4 corner squares from some of the center fabric(s), the border strips are just long enough for this smaller size. Since it's out of the frog pond, hopefully I get it all stitched together soon.
I like reading about other quilters' decisions on things like this. It makes me feel a little less freak-ish for obsessing over things! I would also have ripped it out and shortened it - or, more likely, I wouldn't have thought to make it smaller and instead would have spent another day sewing more strips to make it bigger!
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