After a few days of intensive work, including stitching and pressing, my quilt is finally coming together! There are 224 blocks total, each 6 inches square. This is quite a project and, if I had any idea how long it was going to take, I probably would never have started it in the first place!
The photo above shows all the blocks. The blocks of each row are joined, but the rows themselves still need to be stitched together, which I am working on now.
Keeping track of all 224 blocks is quite a task. Contrary to appearances, the order in which the blocks appear is not random, so I devised a labeling system to give each block a coordinate. The following photo shows the wrong side of the quilt top. You can click on it for a bigger view.
As you can see there are three bits of information on each little tag. The first number is just something used to inject some entropy into the arrangement of the quilt blocks. The second gives a coordinate pair so the block winds up in the right location. The third letter, a "M" or a "D", ensures that the pattern of lights and darks is maintained.
The "M" and "D" letters are crucial because the key to this pattern is the interplay of light, medium, and dark colors. At first glance this quilt just looks like an enormous pile of scraps--indeed, as I was stitching pieces together I began to despair because I was afraid that all it would ever be was an enormous pile of scraps. What I love about this pattern, though, is the way it plays tricks on your eyes. If you look at it long enough you will see kaleidescope-like ring patterns emerging. It reminds me of those "Magic Eye" patterns that used to appear in the comics section of Sunday newspapers. I could never see the Magic Eye patterns, but I can see the interesting patterns that emerge with this quilt. It fascinates me that you can get these sort of optical patterns just by carefully weaving together some triangles of differing brightness.
One might think that quilting is all about sewing, but actually I spend tons of time pressing and cutting as well. Pressing is immensely important--it's what makes the finished product look like a cohesive work rather than like a bunch of haphazardly assembled pieces. For instance, the corner light triangles of each block are attached last. Before pressing it looks like this:
Only after you press the block does it look like this:
Currently I'm stitching all those rows together, which is a little more tricky than it might at first appear. Then the top will be done! I'm still trying to figure out how to quilt this thing, though.
posted at: 16:20 | path: / | permanent link to this entry
