Still in pieces

Well, I don't know about all of you but woah. August is pretty awesome. I'd be okay with it not ending but my whole, you know, no income thing is starting to put a cramp in things. I have been super busy and running around like mad. I never know what day it is I just know where I am suppose to be in relation to what I am currently doing. It's like 'today I'm going to walk to Tisol and then go have dinner with Ju and tomorrow Mom gets here and one day after Mom gets here I go to Gibsons and after Gibsons Jen and Jim get here and then after Jim and Jen get here I am going to Pitch and Putt and the BBQ for Jess and Jay and after that Jess and Jay are getting married and....' and occasionally I nap.

I have lots to blog about so I just decided to see which photos were first in my queue because normally it would be all 'WEDDING' but my battery is dead and it needs to charge before I can upload so don't worry, soon there will be pictures of the JJ wedding.Anyhoo, last you heard about the quilt was this post where I amazed you all with my mad colouring skillz. We've gone a bit from there though it may not look like it. I love how long this quilt took even before I got it to a sewing machine.

Anyhoo, I finally gathered my courage and started cutting the fabric. Most likely against/with the wrong grain but is anyone really expecting this quilt to be even remotely correct? I digress, so I started cutting, which I really thought was going to be the hard hard time consuming portion but once I got started it went really quickly.
I made little piles of each and put their letter on them.
Now, I can't remember if I told you but I did lose my binder with all my notes so I kinda had to fudge some of the fabrics and where they went. What was interesting was as I was cutting I found out, in time, about two choices I had made that were wrong. Because I just had the fabric cut according to how much I would need when I would pull a fabric and look at the numbers I was able to tell if the fabric was too small or too large and then look at the order of the letters and figure out which one it needed to be switched with. As well, if fabrics were very similar and the letters were similar in value than I would look at which fabric got more 'showtime' and choose the fabric I liked best. For instance, I have one fabric with mushrooms and one with herons, and when I couldn't figure out which was was which letter because their values were so similar I just figured out which one had the longest segments and made it the heron because I liked it better.

Did that make any sense?
I kept on cutting and ironing...
when Spike was kind enough to let me iron the fabrics.

I was very enamored with this fabric because the 3" cut was also the motif repeat so all the cuts were at the same point. I totally love this fabric. until it ran out. Yup. Ran out. Needed something lame like four more big squares. Nothing I could do. Cried a little. Considered finding the personal home phone number of the owner of Fabricana so he could check to see if they still carried the fabric (it was probably around 2am at this point) but I didn't. So the next morning I frantically bused over to Richmond and the insanely helpful people there found my fabric right away and cut me a quarter (I was tempted to ask for a four inch strip) and I finished the cuts. Here they are.
It's not really my favorite fabric anymore. So I finished. Some had a few pieces, like up above, or some, like L, had a lot of pieces.
Now, the funny part, is I was so proud of myself. Did that all in an evening. I was going to finish this quilt in NO TIME. Booyah. Because, I mean really, all I had to do after this was sort the pieces. Say it with me this time- booyah!
So I got the rows numbered and sorted on the table.
All spiffy like. And started sorting. And sorting. And sorting.... and sorting............. and sorting....
OH GOD WILL IT EVER END?!?!?!?About four or so hours later it did.
But during the sorting I realized that the notes I had made about which pieces went in which rows didn't always meet up with the coloured chart I had made. Keep in mind the program I used just gives you the chart, it doesn't break it down any further for you so you have to figure out each row. And the two ways I did that, through the colouring and the notes, didn't match. Fun.

So then I went through each row and made sure it matched the coloured chart I had made. I set up my table as a big stations and put each row in an envelope and put them in order.
Spike thinks order is for wussies. He prefers them on the floor and under his belly.
He's been such a help. And then I set up my ironing board to line up the pieces according to the coloured chart. It was a good thing I did because there was some discrepancies. It was really slow, but by far the most fun up until this point. It was neat seeing how the fabrics related to each other.
Until Spike figured he would see how the fabrics related to him. And also, if you ever see this look on Spike, which is very similar to his usual look for sure, but still, see that slightly crazier than usual glint? Do not try to pet him or get your fabric out from under him. It will require the use of spiderman band-aids if you do.
So, maybe five or so hours later or something else gawd awful, I finished the sorting.
They sat like this for a bit during all the family and wedding fun, but yesterday I sewed the first strip! 35 left to go!

And since this has been a Spike show (you can tell he's feeling better eh?) I though to throw in a picture of Lala.


This is me at my computer. It's hard to take a photo from this angle so sorry for the fuzziness but could she be any cuter?