It's been a slow start to the year in Red Raspberry land. One thing I haven't shared is the one handmade gift I did actually finish before Christmas. This tablerunner that I made for hubby's Mum.
I don't know how something so relatively simple became such a pain in the butt! It started out ok. Came up with the design, made some half square triangles using some of my favourite Amy Butler fabric, sewed it all together and then it just went downhill from there.
For the small pinwheel blocks I had used a very similar colour fabric as in the large blocks so the pattern just seemed to get lost and just looked a right old mess. Anyway instead of just making 4 new small blocks I decided to sew some sashing strips between the blocks. A whole lot of unpicking and resewing later and I had blocks that didn't line up and something that was starting to resemble more o a tablecloth than a runner. So I unpicked all that bloody sashing, made 4 more small pinwheel blocks and sewed it all back together.
And now this is the part where I get to quilt it right?? Wrong! One of the triangle pieces along the outside didn't meet the edge and not just by a tincy wincy bit but by about a quarter inch, my seam allowance! Many, many swear words later I though what if I unpick one side and then try to stretch it to fit. Guess what?? Didn't work so I unpicked the whole triangle and sewed it back in and the bloody thing still didn't meet up. Would anyone else have ripped it to shreds by now?! When my sanity returned, I cut out a new ( extra large) triangle piece, sewed it in and thank goodness it worked.
It has a pieced back and I quilted using straight lines and then used a pieced binding with the scraps of fabric that were left over. I love the pieced binding. I am going to do this more often!
I think it looks ok. I have never ever unpicked this much in my life and will never ever do so again. The whole project probably took twice as long as it should have but I am quite impressed with myself for not chopping it into small pieces and throwing it in the bin! And best of all is my husband's mum likes it and it is now on her dining room table. (unless of course she whips it out just before we visit and throws it in the cupboard as soon as we leave!)
Lessons learned:
1. Spend more time planning and cutting accurately instead of going guns blazing into a project.
2. If you are unpicking a lot, make sure you have bandaids handy so when you stab yourself multiple times with the pointy bit of the unpicker you don't bleed all over your fabric.
3. Buy new quick unpick as the old one is now worn out.
Oh and I must share these. My little peeps are huge Peppa Pig fans so I appliqued some T-shirts for them. The sewing is absolutely atrocious as I was having a 'not in the mood for sewing day' and it usually looks crap then. Most of the time I would match my thread colour to the fabric and if you are doing raw edge applique and can't sew straight this is what you would do, but I was trying to be clever, for as anyone whose kids watch Peppa Pig will know all the characters have a kind of darker outline around them. I would lone to do a whole quilt af all the little characters. I think it would look fantastic.
Linking up to Small Blog Meet at Lily's Quilts
Anyway I found this wonderful pile of fabric that I was saving for who knows what. Its Pat Bravo's Dreaming in French collection and I thought well there's no point leaving it in a box in a cupboard - let's use it! I am just hoping I have enough for the whole project.
