August 2003 - June 2004: I never pictured myself as someone to make a quilt. Quilting "needle-picks" your fingers -- quilting also requires a fair amount of imagination. Neither is something I like or feel I have an over abundance of. I do however love to cross-stitch. I would see so many things in my books I would like to cross-stitch. In a lot of instances I would see parts or pieces of larger designs I wanted to cross-stitch and I decided one day to just cut up a bunch of my left over cross-stitch fabric scraps into 2-3" squares and sew tiny "heart" cross-stitch patterns I liked on each scrap. This eventually turned into my first quilt – a miniature wall hanging. I have since begun another miniature wall hanging done with tiny animals, i.e. cats, sheep, cows, etc. -- a work still in progress.
While searching thru all my cross-stitch books (which I have accumulated since 1985) looking for the tiny patterns for the wall hanging, I would keep coming across a pattern of a little girl having a tea party. "I want to do her" I would think, but not as a cross-stitch -- something different, something special. I had already turned one cross-stitch pattern into a beautiful Christmas Nutcracker latch-hook rug. So….I began to have recurring thoughts – maybe I could do her as a mosaic; no, maybe in beads; or another latch-hook rug, and so forth. I went out and looked around at mosaic stuff, beading material and yarn and decided it wouldn't look right and/or wouldn't be feasible. However the thought just kept coming back to my head – "I REALLY want to do her, but how?." Then one day it came to me – "I want to do her as a quilt!" a "Real Quilt" !!……
It is late July 2003…I begin thinking "what all is involved in a project like this?" I calculated the size of the pattern versus the size of a normal quilt—wow!! The squares would have to be tiny. Well, I could do this…"Tiny" is my "thing"…I've always liked "Tiny"….tiny dolls, tiny collectibles, etc., and my sister had stitched a "very tiny" quilt picture for my mom and it was beautiful…If she could, I could…and so the planning stage began. What would I need? I wrote down the number (DMC) and color of each skein of floss required for the pattern as if it was being cross-stitched. Then I drug out all of my stored away material and began to go thru it looking for matches to the thread. I had some, but most I did not. So off to the fabric store I went (which eventually turned into four stores). I began to match floss to fabric. Some I was very satisfied with, others not so satisfied, but thought would do. With fabric in hand, off I went to finish the prep work. Each fabric was ironed and folded and placed in a sandwich bag, then labeled with the color and cross stitch code. Then when this was done, I made a pattern from thick heavy cardboard approximately 1" x 1" in size. I ironed the fabric from each baggy into 1" wide by 6"-7" long (more or less) strips and cut 4-5 strips (twice folded) so when cut would make four squares at a time. I pre-cut squares (about two strips per bag to begin with) for each color. Now…I was finally ready to begin -- it is August 5, 2003 .
Dilemma!... Cross-stitch patterns all have lots of non-pattern area "so to speak" -- blank areas that you don't sew on when cross-stitching. Should I sew just the printed pattern and add giant pieces of fabric around her after she was done….. Maybe I would sew every blank square in a light color the same way as the pattern, either way would add a lot of sewing to the quilt. Well I would start with just the printed pattern and see how it went. And so began Phase 1 of my “Quilt Odessey”. Approximately ten rows later the quilt began to take shape and look really cool. I decided it wouldn't be so bad after all to do all the white (blank) fill-in like the rest of the quilt. What to use? I didn't want it to be just plain white fabric. I thought and thought and finally created a pattern of sorts with some material my sister Mary volunteered. I back-tracked and begin sewing the fill-in around the rows all ready completed…and to prevent boredom with the fill-in, worked on adding a new row at the same time.
By this time, I knew how long it was taking me to sew the squares and how many there were across and down…140 squares across and 160 squares down…Wow!! 22,400 squares in all! I estimated approximately 2 years for this project (just to complete the top) and another 1 to1½ years to assemble/quilt. Well that was okay I said "I can do this". So I plugged along….sewing some each day, sewing together each square into strips of 10 and then sewing the strips of 10 together until each row of 140 was completed. Then the rows of 140 were sewed together to create the quilt. In October of 2003, I was to her forehead when I decided to start recording my progress by camera. So every 6-10 rows, a new picture, and after seeing a quilt diary in a store in June 2004 I also decided to keep an oral journal (this J). I don't know how it will all turn out but will keep plugging along, sewing a little each day and I'll be back with more of this story. At this date -- June 20, 2004 , I am on row 49 and have sewn almost 6,860 squares.
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