Not So Fancy Nancy: Heather Bailey Friendship Braid Ready for Quilting

Heather Bailey Friendship Braid Ready for Quilting

I'm have so much fun with playing with my swap quiltlets. Those two will go out on Monday, so I'll post photos at completion. In the meantime I'll share some photos I took a few weeks ago...

Heather Baily Friendship Braid ready for quilting:

Tested just about every color in there for the border as well as white. Went with the chocolate brown because I love how it frames everything and shifts the colors from pastel to almost jewel tones. It will go much better in our house now.

Ironed the top to perfection and wanted to keep it that way while prepping the back and batting. Usually the ironing board or dining table serves, but my feline and canine helpers were in fine form that day, so I hung this from the door frame as a last resort.

After standing back I considered leaving it, but we do use that door (oh well).

I always admired the Kaffe Fassett version of this from his first book. If I ever have the right place for it I will have to try this stained-glass effect. I think it would be perfect for a window that needs permanent cover.

I LOVE this quilt, but I want to share the following as a cautionary tale. These braid strips are created randomly, but in two different directions to create four A strips and four B strips. You layout the finished strips in A/B order, so your options for rearranging the final strips are limited. Still, nut job that I am I sorted, considered, resorted, had lunch, did it again, etc. All good and optimized. Time to sew.

I should have taken the pairs one a time to the machine, but I got ~~efficient~~ cocky and paired and sewed all the strip pairs at once. (Yeah, I know cocky implies male, but there's not a good female equivalent that I can think of right now. Feel free to post one in comments. I just accept that it's a testosterone driven behavior anyway.) In my defense, I did use different colored pins at the top of each pair to show placement and direction, but that obviously wasn't enough. Between sewing and ironing I must have switched a pairing because these two were NOT next to each other in my optimized layout! Considering that I made each strip independently, the similarity between these two strips also tells me that I'm just a touch hyper-controlling, even when trying to be random!

This bottom border should have been a clue, but I'd pieced these in an odd way, so brushed it away rather than really thinking about what I was seeing. This was a side project to a larger quilt, so I didn't start with all the fabric at once and also mis-cut some patches too short (the orange print right of center). At the end of piecing the strips I added a few patches to some strips to balance patterns, so the unevenness didn't jump out at me. Note to self, no more ignoring those little "Hey, what's that?" thoughts! Really. Stop doing that!

Embarrassed that I only caught it when adding the border. NO WAY was I ripping to fix it -- I've got enough hard-learned wisdom to know that would do more damage than good.

Next time I'm indicating row placement and vertical direction by either safety pinning a note or writing with water-soluble marker on the back of each strip. Something I can check one last time before lowering those feed dogs.

As penance I documented the problem and am sharing it with you. Mistake recognized, penance done. I'm at peace with it. I know non-quilters will never see it, but I do and yet that's OK. I love it anyway. Now to figure out the quilting...

Posted at 12:48 PM in Quilting - Heather Bailey Friendship Braid | Permalink

Comments

I love this theme, it's exciting haha thanks for sharing, my contribution here.
http://www.xlpharmacy.com/viagra/generic.php
http://www.safemeds.com/viagra/generic.html
Mike R. Lehman
2984 Bedford Street
Hartford, CT 06103

Posted by: generic viagra | July 01, 2010 at 03:13 PM

Dear，how are you today? I wish you a happy day!

Posted by: Air Force Ones | November 08, 2010 at 07:51 PM

I am making my first Friendship Braid quilt and was wondering how you quilted it?

Posted by: Debbie | November 09, 2010 at 12:58 PM

I love the look of your quilt top with the light shining behind it like stained glass. What a colorful profusion! (And what a clever way to avoid cat hair.)

Posted by: Cattycorner2 | January 05, 2011 at 06:29 PM

Beautiful quilt! No one will ever see the goof unless you tell them. It's so durned easy to do...

Posted by: Wendi | June 08, 2011 at 07:42 PM

Wow, no one will notice, except maybe your mother-in-law, those minor creativities. I have a crossstich on cloth I went crosseyed doing, I never noticed till it was framed that I had missed 2 stitches. No one, even those aware of the issue, has been able to locate my mistake but I see it every time I look at my sampler. We are our own worst critics.

Just enjoy it as unique and you do lovely work.

Posted by: Tracy | September 02, 2011 at 01:53 PM

I'm going to use friendship braid in a jacket for my Mum - part of her Christmas gift. She loves pinks so will do the stained glass effect but with deep deep pink fractures.

Posted by: Helen Pearson | September 18, 2011 at 03:36 AM