Here I Go! Day 1

OK!  I need another project like I need a hole in the head!  But this is important.

How many of you have heard Harriet Hargrave?  How many of you have taken one of her classes?  How many of you have heard of her Quilter's Academy series?

Well, I just took her Heirloom Quilting class.  Oh My Gosh!  If you EVER get a chance to take this class (or any of her other classes for that matter), please do yourself a favor and do it!

She's a great teacher and a phenomenal educator.  She debunks so many of the commonly held beliefs in quilting.

So, I decided that I need to REALLY learn to quilt.  I'm going to work through that Quilter's Academy and I'll let you know how it goes...the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I would love to have some of you join me, but I know that I'm starting at a really crazy time if I want company, lol.

Anyway...I did the first exercise on page 24 and I already ran into a problem.

You see, I thought that it would be a good idea to use stash.  There's just one problem...almost all my stash is in fat quarters, and I don't know if there's any way to truly get the fabric on grain.

If you know anything about Harriet, she tears her fabric and then realigns it on the true grain of the fabric.  (You can find more about this in Quilter's Academy Vol. 1 pages 12-14.)

I'm not sure how that works with fat quarters.  I tried tearing the edge of my fat quarter, but it got REALLY distorted, so I just lined it up the best I could and cut the strips.

They looked straight...before I pressed them and "made them flat as a board" (as Harriet is fond of saying).  The resulting strip set looked like this after pressing and starching.

So, when I measured the strip set, the top was exactly five inches across...

...however, if you look closely, the middle strip is not 1½" like it's supposed to be...it's narrower.  Not only do I have "unstraight" fabric, my seam allowance is too wide.

So...back to the drawing board.

Tomorrow, my plan is to find a couple of large pieces of fabric.  I do have them, it's just that I have TONS of fat quarters.  I'll redo this exercise and let you know how it goes.