From BSP to UFO - Making Progress

Last moth I posted about a my first jelly role of fabric ... and while I expected to have made a lot more progress than I have, I am pleased to report on all of the work I've done!

Shortly after my post I brought all of my squares downstairs to show Ryan ... and to sort of "mock up" the quilt top.  Since the squares are all placed "on point," the quilt is assembled diagonally from the top left corner to the bottom right corner as opposed to being put together from top to bottom.  Typically, people will use a design wall  (for example), to lay out their quilts, and then the pieces can be removed as you need them, or you can easily change out sections of your quilt with out worrying about messing things up ... I ... well ... I chose to lay my quilt out on the floor in a main thorough-way of our apartment ... and then tape all of the pieces together with masking tape in the strips in which they would be assembled, labeling each strip with a number and an arrow indicating which direction was "up" ...

This strategy worked well until it came time to move all 17 strips upstairs to my sewing area ... and then came the question of how on earth to store the strips in our limited space ... so I immediately began sewing strips together ... I spent about 2 days sewing at almost every opportunity ... running up and down the steps, bringing up 2-3 strips at a time ... and sewing them together ...

This got tiring.

Very tiring.

Not to mention every now and then Otto would break the barrier and accidentally stomp on a few strips, which chose to stick to his rough paws rather than their neighbor ... regardless of the masking tape ...

So I finally caved in to gently stacking the strips on top of one another and carrying them upstairs ... laying them out on Otto's crate ... removing them one at a time, or in sections ... laying it across the bed while I worked ... amazingly only flipping about 10 of the 300 squares during assembly.  <thumbs up>  Would i do it this way again? No chance.  Did it work? Yep!

Well ..  am proud to say that I am about halfway done with the quilt top!  It is absolutely beautiful.  I had to make an extra trip to Erica's to buy more of the tone-on-tone border fabric because of a bad cut that wasted about 7-inches of my fabric ... grr ... but I received the fabric free of charge, so I can't really complain.  I have the rest of my sashing triangles cut and ready to go!  Assembly at this point has been simple and quick, with pressing taking the most work ... but I am honestly doing my best pressing ever ... and for that I am proud.

I think I am going to give this quilt away as a "Pay it Forward" 2012 gift to a certain someone that I owe a quilt ... <3




(**BSP - Barely Started Project  /  UFO - Un-Finished Object)