Lesson Seven: Harriet's Woodland Winter Quilt

I finished the middle of Harriet's Woodland Winter Quilt yesterday.

It took me most of the day.

I kept thinking along the way that had I been doing it "my" way, I would have finished in about half the time.

It made me think about The Process Pledge which is a movement that strives to encourage others to blog about the process of quilting instead of just about the finished quilt.

The goal of the process pledge is to create a new sensibility in quilting blogs where we don’t just show finishes or occasionally confess about our moments of indecision, but chat openly and often about our works in progress, our inspirations, and our moments of decision. (Rossie, May 14, 2010)

I really like the idea, and I think that I have been naturally blogging a lot about the process, but maybe I don't as much as I think I do. Yesterday, working on this quilt reminded me about the process of quilting.

Because Harriet and Carrie focus so much on the process of quilting...on breaking down each little part and making certain that each step serves its purpose of making the quilt more accurate...this project of blogging about my journey through Quilter's Academy lends itself to blogging about the process of quilting.

So, I decided to share some thoughts that I had yesterday while I was making Harriet's Woodland Winter Quilt.

Of course, I made it from my own fabric...

...because in addition to the fact that I want to finish Quilter's Academy, I also want to do as many of the quilts from my stash as possible.

I straightened all the fabric and cut it.  Of course, I had different colors of fabric from Harriet.

While sewing the strips, I noticed that the yellow fabric was thicker than the other fabrics, so it was tricky to put it in the strip set and have the sets come out exactly 3½", but I worked at it.

Here's my test strip...

And here are the sections that I had to cut out because my seams weren't straight and they were too small.

So, I ended up having to cut six strip sets instead of just five...note to self...cut out at least one more strip set than you think you'll need.

Then, once my strip sets were done and cut and I cut my squares, I decided to put the quilt together, but I realized that I had put the strip sets together wrong.

HOLY HANNAH!

SO.........

I looked at the quilt and I looked at my strip sets....

and I figured out a little different arrangement....

and I ended up with this.

I tried Harriet and Carrie's method for chain piecing.

I have to admit, I didn't use it in Lesson Six when it was introduced.

It was awkward at first...laying out the entire quilt, gathering up the blocks and stacking them into rows.

Because I don't have a big space to the side of my machine, I put the stacks on a small rotary cutting board and put them a little behind my machine.

I followed the instructions exactly as given and lo and behold....it worked really slick!

Here's a photo of most of the quilt top finished with the last few rows attached.

There are times when it's hard to manage the quilt with it all attached together like that.  I can imagine with a huge quilt that it would be really unmanageable.

But....

that's why we're started out on small quilts...

...and I think I read somewhere that you can do a large quilt in quarter sections and then sew the sections together which makes sense.

Anyway...I finished it.  It was awkward in a lot of ways, but I know that as I use these methods, they'll become so much a part of how I quilt that it won't take extra time...and it's so much more accurate!