Fiber Babble: December's Shaping Up!

December's Shaping Up!

December 08, 2013

Life forever remained a wondrous mystery, even for him. "Black Order" by James Rollins ♦♦♦♦◊

I wonder where I come up with some of my sayings. It must be because of how much I read - occasionally I'll find myself saying something about throwing vittles down my gullet. Seriously?

Here is my early(ish) December post to tell the world what I'm hoping to accomplish, fiber-wise, this month. The big story is the quilt guild BOM. This isn't a "by New Year's Eve" thing, but a "by 4:30 on Tuesday 10 December" thing. eek! I wanted to have the whole thing quilted, but I'll settle for getting the top put together before our guild's December meeting/party/pot-luck/big reveal on Tuesday night.

So, here's where I am. I have all of the blocks finished and have started putting the first sashing on them. I'm bordering each block with a 2¼" cut strip then cutting all of the blocks down to 12". No, not 12½", 12".

This is what we call Plan B, for those of you who didn't see that coming.

I have this many sashed and trimmed so far, and today I'll be cutting more strips for the last two sides of the remaining 13 blocks.

The original plan was, of course, to cut these to 12½", but some of my earlier blocks didn't quite make it to 9½". Once I gave myself permission to make the blocks MY way rather than trying to follow the written directions, they started turning out the way they should. But one must work to the lowest common denominator (or something like that), so 12" unfinished it is.

I'm using a sashing/setting idea that I found at Geta's Quilting Studio. What a perfect way to 'even up' differently-sized blocks - and make it look like you meant to do it that way!!

So, here's the fabric that I picked for the rest of the setting. I like it a lot.

But this is one that I bought without A Plan and then decided to use in this project. We all know what's coming, right? I don't have enough. Well, I do have enough for the setting, but I wanted to use it for the border, too.

So, thinking to myself, "I know what I'm looking for, I don't need to take it to the store with me," I promptly bought two yards of THIS fabric.

Same flavor, but no dice. And now that I know what I'm looking for (for real), the blue-backgrounded fabric is nowhere to be found.

What are we on now, Plan C?

I also picked up some green to add to my quilt as an accent when I picked up the white backgrounded fabric - it will work with both fabrics, so it will definitely get used.

But I'm just not sure how the quilt is going to finish up. Once I get the blocks together, I'll decide whether the new print will work as a border.

I might have to do that old tea-dye thing that someone else I know was just considering!

In other UFO goals this month, I have a Christmas present that needs to be finished. That's it. Yeah. That's all. Just get a full-sized quilt top done in the next two days (and meet other commitments during that time, too) and finish a Christmas present. No sweat.

Because the best motivator for me is a deadline, right?

I'm linking this post to Carrie's "Nothing But UFOs in 2013" December post.

Labels: quilting