WIP Wednesday: A Spotty Swoon

I kind of feel like a Swoon Quilt is a rite of passage for a quilter. The internet is certainly awash with them and I myself have a Pinterest board dedicated just to the Swoon.

 

I started mine a long time ago. This was going to be a quilt for my bed! I signed up for one of Camille Roskelley’s Craftsy classes and the pattern came with the class. Now, do you think I have done that class? Have I even finished my Swoon? Do I have a quilt for my own bed? No, no and no. I just looked back in Instagram and I posted my first block 63 weeks ago!!! And I am sure that I cut the fabric a long time before that, so this quilt has been hanging around in my garage sewing room for a long time. 

 

Since this was going to be for my bed, which is also my husband’s bed, I didn’t want it to be too girly. I bought myself a FQ bundle of Dear Stella’s mini confetti dots, armed myself with some yardage of Kona Silver and off I went. Chop, chop, chop. 

 

Now first of all, can I say that there is not a lot of wriggle room in the cutting instructions if you are cutting from FQs. Keep in mind that I started making this when I hadn’t been sewing for very long, so I was not the accurate cutting star I am now. Some of my FQs were also....let’s just say cut on a bit of an angle.  Whatever, I made do with what I and cut all my blocks where they languished for a while, unsewn, but neatly organised in sandwich bags (as an aside, I didn’t discover sandwich bags til I had kids and they are a life changer – get some if you haven’t already!).

 

When I finally came to make my first block I realised a few things: 1) they are huge; 2) you need to make a lot of HSTs – not my favourite; 3) the squares for the HSTs are sized so you “shouldn’t” have to trim them once you are done (note that this assumes you can sew in a straight line; 63 weeks ago I had not mastered that skills, some of my seams have a creative seam allowance); 4) each block takes a while to make, especially if you are not so good at sewing in straight lines. Hence why my quilt is still unfinished. 

 

To be fair, I didn’t watch the Craftsy class on the Swoon so I am sure that there are some great tips in there that would have accelerated my progress and made my sewing more accurate. I do use the tips that were in the first episode regularly, so this is not a reflection on the instruction but more my general impatience and my general attitude that with rough guidelines are enough and I can figure the rest out. Not necessarily the most efficient. Also, now that I am up to block number 7, I am MUCH faster and 63 weeks later I am a much better sewer. So much so that there is finally light at the end of the tunnel.

 

I have two more blocks to make and then I need to quilt the beast. The idea of that sends a shiver down my spine. The biggest thing I have quilted on my machine is a king single (not sure what that translates to outside of Australia) so not that big. I am seriously contemplating QAYG for this, unless someone points out a good reason why this wouldn’t work.  

 

This is on my Q4 FAL list and realistically I don’t know if I will get it done for December but I will definitely push for that. I also need to add point number 5) to my list above. The blocks look fantastic and I know I am going to love this quilt when it is done and be super proud of having achieved my Swoon Quilters Badge^*

 

(* Not a real thing, but probably should be)

 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday.