I confess: I’m a stripper. I’m not a professional stripper; I don’t get paid to strip. I do it because I love it! Which is a good thing, because I spent several hours stripping this weekend. And I’m not quite done yet…
What? No, I wasn’t taking my clothes off (although it was hot enough to make me consider it). I was cutting fabric strips, then sewing said strips together to make “strip sets”, which will be cut into triangular units.
First, I cut all the blue strips for WomanChild’s quilt:
Then I set them out with the green ones from yesterday so I could figure out which strips would go in which sets:
And just so you know, this was not the final layout I decided on.
Then I sat down to start sewing all 112 strips together into groups of 4. Except that some of my strips are only half as long as they need to be, which called for some creative piecing. On the short sets, I sewed one short strip to half of the long strip next to it, then turned it around and sewed the second short strip to the same long strip, keeping my selvedges even on each end. Later, I cut the strip sets with short strips in half, so I could press the seams.
Yes, I could have cut enough of the long strips in half to make piecing easier, but I decided I’d rather keep as much of the strip sets intact as possible.
That probably didn’t make any sense to anyone besides me. But trust me, it will make more sense later.
So far, here is what I have finished sewing:
You will notice that the second fabric in each set is different. The top set is one of those “half-length” strips I was talking about before. So those strips are only about 20 inches long or so. The set on the bottom is about 42 inches long, and is folded over. So far, I have 6 long sets and 6 short sets sewn and pressed. Eventually, these will be cut into triangles, then pieced back together in certain ways to make a cool pattern. It was getting late, so I decided to stop for the night.
I also decided to update my playlist. Which apparently is taking quite a while, since I added about a gazillion songs to the playlist that I play while I’m sewing. The mix is pretty diverse, including Todd Rundgren/Utopia, Shania Twain, Culture Club, Owl City and Within Temptation, among many, many others. Most of the music includes vocals, which is fine if I’m not trying to read or write. I find it too distracting to listen to voices if I’m trying to work with words.
I also found out that WomanChild is now a fan of Within Temptation, since she heard me playing “Angels” one afternoon several months ago. I think I’ll let her add my CDs to her iTunes playlist, if I can find them. If not, I’ll just copy the music to a thumb drive or something and transfer it to her computer. I’m pleased that she likes a diverse selection of music, and it’s not all teen-pop. Although you’d never know it, judging by the posters taped to her walls. Which includes Justin Bieber (gag!). At least she wrote something negative on the poster. But why she would still hang it on her wall is beyond me…
Well, since it’s already past midnight, guess I should go ahead and close this for tonight. More tomorrow!
