UFO Week, Day #2

 

    Busy day today.  In order to stay on track in my quest to finish UFOs this week, I chose an easy one.  Many of you saw this quilt top on my design wall a few weeks ago in the Nine Patch A Day Group on Facebook.  The top was made in March of 2020.  The pattern is Any Twelve Will Do featuring the Perfect Rectangle Ruler that I design for Creative Grids.  At the time I offered a free handout for the pattern.  Since that time it has been published as a Cut Loose Press pattern and is available to purchase here: Any 12 Will Do Runner PDF Pattern – CutLoosePress™

UFO Week, Project #2:  Any Twelve Will Do Runner.

Requires: Quilting and binding.

The Reason this project is a UFO: I'm going to be honest and say the real reason is sloppy pressing and dirty marks.  Sometimes I don't practice what I preach.  In a perfect world I would always press my seams open, and then press them to one side.  Many people don't think that will make a difference, but if you are really picky about the way your finished projects look, I promise you it does.  

    This runner top was tossed to the side because I was unhappy with the way the seams were laying.  Having just rolled them to the side, I could easily see which direction the seams were pressed. Normally that isn't a problem, especially if they are in some symmetrical pattern. In this case the seams were going every which way and it was OBVIOUS.  I knew that pressing them open and then to one side would fix the problem, but I kept telling myself it didn't matter.  

    There are areas in this quilt top where lots of seams come together.  In my effort to finish quickly, I didn't check the bottom of my iron.  Running the iron over the lump where seams came together created a dirty spot on the white fabric.  Always on the white fabric.  More irritated at myself than anything else, I tossed it into the UFO pile.

Progress:  Some projects were meant to be a learning experience.  I decided to sacrifice this one to my learning curve on the longarm machine.  I did take the time to repress the most offensive of the seams before loading the backing, batting and runner into my Handi Quilter.  It is important for you to know that I only quilt my own projects.  99% of them are quilted using the computerized ProStitcher and an all over pattern.  I don't do "show-off" quilting.  The machine does have amazing features that I rarely use.  I also own several of those fancy quilting rulers, many of which are still in the package.  No time like the present to play around a little and see what I can do with the right tools.

    First of all, custom quilting is worth every single penny.  You have no idea how involved it is until you have tried it yourself.  I have walked a mile (or stitched a few thousand yards of thread) in those shoes, and I am here to tell you that it isn't as easy as they make it look!  For allover designs you set the design and let the machine do its job.  To custom quilt you have to create designs, resize, define then crop either inside or outside of an area, reposition start and stop places and use other features that I haven't even attempted.  I wouldn't say it is difficult, but it is technically precise and challenging.  The learning curve is steep.  Especially if you take my route and experiment rather than watching the educational videos.  Skipping that important information was probably a mistake!

    For example, when you crop a design, the machine stitches straight, along the invisible line you created when you established the crop.  As you can imagine, it is difficult to establish the position of an invisible line.  Now that I have done it 24 times, I am beginning to get the hang of my machine.  I wanted those stitch-in-the-ditch lines IN the ditch.  Now I'm not so sure that is a reasonable expectation.  What I should have done is to make sure that the blue thread would be stitching on the blue fabric.

    I did learn to crop, center, use rulers to stitch in the ditch, invert and mirror image designs.  The dirty, lumpy runner was the perfect project to experiment on.  There were no "What if I screw up" moments of panic.  I wasn't worried about making this project worse. The fact is, the imperfect quilting actually made it better. 

  When it came off the quilting machine, I pressed, trimmed and stitched the binding in place.  This project got the fused in place and stitched in the ditch by machine binding treatment.  It is done.  Finished.  Officially graduated from the UFO pile.

    Naturally I see every mistake and there are plenty to see.  I tossed it on the kitchen table for the photo shown above.  My husband came in, took one look and said, did you quilt that?  I confirmed that I did.  His response was "That's impressive".  Proof that you are always your own worst critic.  Let others enjoy your work without burdening them with your own disappointment.