Frustruating

There are very few things I do that don't have a specific order. For me, the planning is part of the fun: I don't like to throw things together - to quote my mother - "all lolly-gaggle". I don't want to go into a project and not KNOW what I'm going to have as an end result. For that reason, I always plan out out my quilts on graph paper first - even if I'm using a pattern, I'll usually graph out what prints go where as a point of reference. I then "block off" those areas I've finished.

A big reason for my fussiness is my problem with directions. I can read a pattern ten times, but I usually don't understand it until I've gone through it myself. I can't read driving directions, and I can't understand them when they're spoken to me. Usually, the only way I can get from A to B is to have someone directing me as I go (who is, of course, able to understand directions - my little brother and I have been lost many a time because neither of us really can). Once I've gone down that road once, though, I'll remember how to get there the next time with no help at all.

Quilting is, essentially, the same. Two of the quilts I'm working on now - the Prince Charming Log Cabin and the LouLouthi Flannels Chevron - have patterns that I worked out myself, with colors and fabrics in very specific places, that require me to look at the graph every time I work on it. I've had a few problems with the flannel quilt, and had to recut flannel squares and re-do certain parts (because seam-ripping flannel is terrifying). But as long as I'm paying attention, everything is all good.

Last night, I was very close to finishing my Log Cabin quilt top. I'm trying to get this project out of the way because, as much as I love it, I need to work on Christmas projects and this top's unfinished state is taunting me as I walk through my apartment.

I was very close to finishing it until I realized that the blocks weren't lining up right. The colors are supposed to match diagonally - indigo, red, green, honey, ingido might go across, and then the next row would be honey, ingido, red, green, honey, or so on. But I had switched the red and green in one row, and so they lined up vertically instead. I just about gave up there, but spent about fifteen minutes seam ripping and resolving to fix that row (luckily, the only one incorrectly sewn) before moving forward with anything else.

So you know what fun project I have waiting for me tonight! After that, I'm set on finishing that tonight and then starting on the cutting for one of my boss' quilt. I'll take pictures of the log cabin once it's daylight again! (For I quilt in the wee hours of the morning).

Until next time, later days!