So we really have to call this The Part That Made Me Cry…
One Crafturday morning back in April I was staring at the cover of this Kaffe Fassett book and decided that I wanted to make a quick mini-quilt using some of those acute triangles. Now I don’t know how to extract patterns from books (scanner? copier? I don’t own either at home). So I drafted my own paper-piecing pattern freehand using the drawing functions in Word and printed out a few squares. That was simple.
But when I cut the fabrics, I cut them all out at once and cut them rather precisely to fit the printed triangles (with 0.25″ seam allowance added) and with little room for placement error. This was a big mistake.
It is really hard to judge those sharp angles and get the exact offset needed for good coverage. So I ended up sewing and resewing every single triangle in those nine squares because I didn’t want to waste all those precut wacky acute-angle triangles. And I didn’t want to put this aside because I knew I’d never come back to finish it if I had enough time to think about the insanity of spending a Saturday working on something so frustrating.
Thank goodness I committed myself to making only nine of these little blocks anyway. Because by the time I got to block number six I really thought that I’d have the technique down and it would just zip along. But no. No, I couldn’t get it right. I never got it right on the first try.
And I cried. I cried on Crafturday. It was a very dark day.
But the patchwork? I couldn’t help loving it. George was going to be like one of those kinds of boyfriends…
Tomorrow: What arises from the sadness…
Oh, no one should cry on a Crafturday! Isn’t there a law?
I learned pretty quickly with paper-piecing that whenever there’s an angle involved, I really can’t use “those little scraps that won’t work for anything else!!!!” like they say so enthusiastically in paper-piecing tutorials. I can never quite predict where it’ll all end when I flip and press and trim, so I have to use big pieces.
I’m also spatially challenged. Geometry was not my best friend.
I still have a box of yellow and black triangles cut for quilt blocks much like these. Hugely frustrating–those long bias edges just don’t behave no matter what kind of sewing skills you have. It defeated me; I gave up on that project. And it would have been such a sensational quilt…
Much as I hate to say it, I think foundation piecing is the best way to work with long bias triangles like these. Uses a lot of fabric, but the points are nice and precise.
Oh, this story really nearly made me cry! I am glad that I have seen your FLICKR stream so I know this might have a happy ending. While driving this morning, I was plotting a post on my blog that I want to write about our dreamy expectations and the whack in the face that reality sometimes gives us. This story of yours fits that theme perfectly and quilters everywhere can feel your pain.
Ah yes, the number one reason why I hate paper piecing.