Finally Sewed a Seam!

I let so many other things take precedence over this project - things for other people mostly. I guess it was easier to put off something for ME.

I've had the "plan" almost from the start, but yesterday was the first day I actually played with fabric. (I know! How sad is that??)

I started by counting how many of what letters I needed:


Then I drew out the approximate shape of the letters I wanted/needed so there would be some sort of map (however crude) when I began cutting and sewing. I dug through my stacks of scraps cut into strips. I have a piece of print fabric I'm using as the color palette, so from my scraps I found blacks and greens and a cranberry. There's room for a federal blue and coffee brown, too, but I didn't have those scraps.

So, starting with "a", I began piecing. The first letter took some thought, but I referred to my map and didn't think too much (that's a biggie with me!). I used scissors, not a rotary cutter just so that I could stay away from the temptation to measure everything out to some sort of specifications. I did use the rotary cutter afterward to square up the block.

After the first block, I was able to chain piece the remaining a's. Each block is a little different and definitely an individual learning experience. I'm off to make 6 "e" blocks this afternoon, but I'm sure I'll go even farther than that. These are FUN!

I Think Too Much

You know, part of the reason that I decided to play along is that I'm, uh, a bit particular about planning and cutting and piecing. My hope is that by embracing my inner wonk I can get over myself a bit.

I'm still on board for that. I have a 'design proposal' in my brain, a target finished size, a color scheme, even the potential location for hanging my finished work of wonk.

So why haven't I taken scissors to fabric yet? Well, I'm thinking a lot, that's why. I have 56 letters and spaces in the words I want to use. Some of the words need to be emphasized, so they'll be bigger than the others. Based upon the desired finished size of my quilt (ballpark!), I'll have 5 rows of words, with each of the first 3 rows finishing out to approximately 58.5". That means, based upon the number of letters in a row and considering the highlighted words, each letter will be between 1.5 and 4.5 inches wide and 1.5 to 6 inches tall. And yes, I've taken into account tall letters vs. short letters and wide vs. skinny for Every. Single. Letter.

Twice.

So here it is: The bulk of my project will be words, with pictures (coffee cups!) as, what? Fill-in? Accessories? Since the WORDS are what will determine the look and size of the finished project, is there any hope that all this thinking is not necessarily overkill?

I'm off to read and re-read every wonky tutorial and discussion that I can get my hands on (again). Everyone makes it look so easy - hopefully it's just a matter of making that first cut...

Hello from FiberBabble!

Hi, all - I've just spent a nice few minutes going through everyone's intro posts. I've gotten some inspiration and it's been an eye candy feast already. Yay, everyone!

I'm Tracy. AKA FiberBabble AKA "T" on the sidebar over there... (I used to try to be fairly anonymous online, but I was "outed" a few months ago!) I live in southwest Washington State in a town that has fewer people than my public high school's graduating class, waaaaay back when.

I've been quilting for, oh... 15? 16? years. It all started when I wanted to make a little quilt to go with one of my dolls (previous lifetime: dollmaker). One little quilt. We all know where the story goes from there, don't we?

I've been stalking following Tonya's blog for quite some time now, and I've always meant to get around to making an intentionally wonky something but haven't actually done anything yet. I got Liberated Piecing back in the "old" days and it's one of three or four quilt-ish books that I won't ever let go of. I was inspired by one of Gwen's photos in the book of a white quilt with red squares (page 158, if you're keeping track) - I made one without all the fancy quilting as a lined curtain for my sewing studio in a different house. It's folded away, waiting to find a similarly-sized window someday!

I'm inspired by the Alphabet Sampler quilt(s) that Lynne over at Patchery Menagerie has been doing. Whether it's a sampler or something else, my plan* is to do letters, letters, letters.

*It's rare that Plan A ever works for me. By necessity, I'm very adaptable!

I don't think that I have a particular "style" of quilting. There are certain colors that I don't care for and certain types of fabric (f'r instance, I'm not a great fan of 30's repros), but otherwise, who knows? If you were to wander through my blog at http://www.fiberbabble.blogspot.com/ you'd see paper foundation piecing, scrap quilts, bright colors, muted colors, pastels. I've even done some quilted "art" that you can visit here, if you want. I think I'm in a scrappy place right now... but that's bound to change soon!

Oh, and have you noticed? There's no such thing as a "short version" with me. There's a reason that my web-ego has Babble in the name!