Wednesday, February 9, 2011

If At First You Don't Succeed...





Sooooo, one of the swaps I'm doing is a First Time Bee.  None of us have participated in a virtual quilting bee before.  This is our first month.  This month's Queen Bee posted Flickr photos of the DC Metro Station as the inspiration for our blocks.  I have been fascinated with this weird curvy shape since she first posted it.  I have drawn about 20 sketches.  Finally, I colored this one.  I'm here to say that it's harder than it looks.

I pieced the 1" squares at the bottom and that wasn't too hard, except apparently I either can't cut or sew accurately, because I couldn't get the seams to line up.  Finally got that fixed.

Then I tried to applique the triangle pieces onto the white background.  They looked like they were stuck on, and I couldn't get the points right.

Then I tried paper piecing the triangles, and that was better, but the background looked wonky.  Not sure I like it at all, but I decided to keep moving.

Then I tried to paper piece the curve.  I finally figured out how to get that to work, but somehow my finished piece ended up 9-3/4 by 10 instead of 10-1/2 square.  So I get to do it again.

But I have to admit, I was way out of my comfort zone, and I learned a lot.  Hopefully, the next try will go better.

Here's to perseverence....  And square quilt blocks.

2 comments:

  1. looking great!! it's fine if it isn't 10.5", I can work it in :) unless you want to redo it for practice! but don't redo on account of me...very excited for this quilt!

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