Variously subtitled:
“Calling my mother’s bluff”
“7 3/4 isn’t divisible by anything”
“Why did I wait so long to quilt this”
So, thanks to our deep freeze, we got another day off. We NEED to go to back to school, but I’m finding it harder and harder to WANT to go, especially since I’m having so much fun quilting.
Mom jokingly commented on Facebook that since I was quilting again, she expected her wallhanging would be coming up soon in the quilting queue, and I decided to call her bluff and get it quilted today.
Isn’t it sweet? The pattern is called “You Are Loved” by Bareroots. I gave her the kit for Christmas a number of years ago: I did all of the prep work, tracing the pieces, prepping the backgrounds, all she had to do was stitch. And then wait 5 years for her daughter to get it quilted. Which took all of about 4 hours. I’m thinking I’ve got Daughter of the Year sewn up.
I panicked when I started, though. I knew I wanted to crosshatch the blocks, but when I set my ruler down to work on marking the divisions, I had a problem:
7 3/4 is not divisible by anything. Which I wailed out loud, making sure Mark could hear me, and hopefully sympathize.
“It’s divisible by 1,” he said.
“Not helping.”
“It’s almost divisible by 5,” he added.
“Still not helping.”
I got creative, though, and made myself a template. I cut a piece of paper to size, and then folded it in half and half again in both directions. (I also drew in some of the diagonal cross-hatching because I was having trouble visualizing how far apart the resulting lines were going to be).
I lined my template up with my square, marking where the fold lines were, and then used those marks to play connect the dots on the block, and voila: perfectly spaced cross-hatching on a strangely sized block!
This quilted up like a dream. I did a little bit of marking, but the quilting is all freehand (well, I used a ruler to guide the cross-hatching).
I wonder how long it will take her to get it bound and hanging on her wall? Hopefully not as many years as it took me to get around to quilting it for her….
That is so darling. And, aren’t you cleaver! I shall remember your trick when I have that problem. May not every happen. But, you never know.
Sweet!!
That is beautiful. As I was reading, before you gave your method, I was thinking of the folded paper method. Glad you also used that method. I like the cross hatch on the diagonal.