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I make a quilt for most babies joining our family, that or a knitted blanket – but a blanket they get! Stella has watched me make many a quilt and she has let me know on more than one occasion that I have not made her a quilt and when will I?!
This summer I spent about 2 weeks going through quilt book after quilt book and searching the internet to finally find the pattern I wanted to make for her. I then spent many a day cutting the fabric for the quilt. I had saved a lot of her baby clothes for this exact purpose (see August 10, A Quilt Begins).
So, yes I started this quilt in August and have hardly progressed since then. First, let me say that it is hard to work on a quilt as a present for your daughter when she is always around – getting a substantial block of time is not easy. I started the sewing process in September, following the directions in the book – but no matter what I did I could not get the center of the star to work. I put it aside. Came back to it in October – I figured I was going to have to hand sew it – after, I cannot tell you how many attempts, I again could not get the center of the star to work – it was put away again!
This past week I have been thinking and thinking about how to put the star together and have the center work and not pucker – it came to me, praise the quilt goddess for showing me the way! The directions on how to put the star together are wrong as I am finding out are all the directions for the star blocks – so I am having to improvise.
It is not sew one piece to another piece until you have 8 pieces to make the star – on indeedy it is not. This is how it is done.
1. Sew 2 triangles together, press the seam and trim the fabric.
2. Sew 2 triangles to 2 triangles – press the seams.
3. Sew 4 triangles to 4 triangles – press the seam and there you have your star! Now I just have to complete 41 more of these.
The next part is to complete the square by sewing 4 triangles and 4 squares to the star.
Again, I cannot get this to work by machine or hand. I went to the fabric store and asked the quilter there to give me some hints, suggestions, anything – I don’t think she was having such a good day because she was not helpful and told me that I could wait for another quilting class and then she would help me – at $65 an hour I think I will pass. I thought and thought on this one and could not come up with anything – so a friend who used to be a seamstress came over yesterday afternoon to assist me. She showed me how to do it, but it would probably take me about 45 minutes per square to do and I am not sure how well I would do it. My solution… I am going to look through my fabric stash and cut squares the size that they need to be for the quilt and then zig zag stitch the stars onto the fabric. If anyone has any tips or suggestions – PLEASE (with a cherry on top) – pass them on. The lesson learned – directions are not always correct and sometime you just need to use good ol’ common sense. My goal now is to have the front of the quilt done by Christmas, since this is Stella’s present from me – and if I can’t do that – at least have a big section of it done – need to go get back to work on it now, since she is out of the house!
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So refreshing to have such honesty!! Haven’t we all, at some point, tried something from directions and thought it was us!! Love that you are making Stella a quilt. : )
I am dealing with a knitting pattern now that the directions are not correct and I have had to rip it out twice, but finally figured out another way to complete the pattern – glad I have some common sense!