The Lockstep quilt was a bit of an experiment for me. I started with a traditional block and a grab bag of upcycled shirts and a doona cover. If I'm honest, I knew I didn't have anywhere near enough fabric to finish the throw size I was planning, but I went ahead anyway...
I also decided I didn't want to cut on the mat, but rather with scissors. Cutting on the mat gives me back and shoulder issues and given I was starting this in lockdown, in winter, without being able to get out and walk much and with no access to my physio, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Oh, I didn't bother with measurements much either. Just eyeballed 2 and a half inches and away I went.
Not enough fabric, no measuring and less than perfect cutting – what could go wrong?
This is where I thought I was headed with the quilt design, but even before I had half the number of blocks required I started running out of fabric. Why didn't I figure out all my yardage beforehand? Do you know, I mostly don't do that when designing. I don't know why. Maybe it's something to do with working with upcycled clothing etc, but maybe I like the challenge of coming up with solutions to those design problems on the fly?
At first I just swapped the colours I ran out of with something similar, as you can see with many of the fabrics in the pic below. A few blocks in I realised I still wouldn't have enough fabric, so I did what I always do when I get a bit stuck and shoved it all in a drawer.
This pic also gives you a good idea of how wonky these blocks are. Just look at those seams around the acid yellow in the top left block – no matching going on there!
My next step was to play around with some new layouts on the computer. While I didn't mind the addition of more colours, it was starting to look a bit overwhelming, and the bottom right looked too much like the coronavirus so it got discounted pretty early on. Nothing was quite right for me yet.
It wasn't until I took the option below and made it in a few different colourways that I knew this was my most workable solution. Keeping in mind I had one eye on my stash too. Buying more fabrics wasn't something I wanted to do and I quite liked the idea of swapping a few fabrics out if I needed to.
Your process for making this is so interesting! I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to do it, or else if I did, I'd be feeling very uncomfortable about it! It might have been difficult to quilt on a domestic, even if you'd had the time, because the wonkiness might have made it more challenging to quilt flat. So glad you had the longarm option because the quilting is gorgeous! It's a pretty quilt. Good for you to make from upcycled things. That's a special talent, and you have it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Linda! Let's face it though, if it had all gone pear-shaped, I probably wouldn't have posted about it ;-) I confess I definitely felt uncomfortable looking at how different the blocks were in shape, but I've just seen so many older wonky quilts and waggas online that I figured it was worth trying.
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