Spiderweb Progress

Layout according to pattern
Layout according to pattern

I have firmly moved into the realm of obsessiveness with this project. I don’t know what got into me this past weekend, but I worked on sewing the blocks for this Spiderweb piece like a person possessed. I had about 7 blocks (sewn in groups of 4) sewn together last week and now I have about 108 sewn together in groups of 4.

By Sunday night I had all of the groups of 4 done and laid them out on the workroom floor (top photo, left). The piece will be large. The original pattern I drew called for a layout of 8 blocks x 10 blocks. I was glad to have the layout and some idea of what I had been thinking except that I ended up with 20 extra blocks.

Hhhmmm. One of the drawbacks for me of leaving a project to languish for so long is that I can’t really remember what I intended. I am pretty sure I didn’t intend to make 20 extra blocks and not use them. I looked at the quilt and the blocks and thought about adding them or making a companion quilt with the extras.

Spiderweb with added blocks
Spiderweb with added blocks

After much thought, I finally decided to add the blocks to the quilt. I couldn’t add them to the side because of my border blocks, so I would need to add them to the middle and make a couple of additional border blocks.

As I may have told you, my workroom floor isn’t large enough (would it ever be?) for a quilt of any size, so I had to take advantage of a half an hour after work to lay the whole thing out on the living room floor. The furniture and life debris still is in the way. The arrows are pointing to the column of blocks I am adding. I am 4 blocks short to complete the column. I will print the foundations, make the borders in between sewing the rest of the new column together in order.

Spiderweb laid out
Spiderweb laid out

I have to admit that I wasn’t sure my scheme would work. I tried to look at the layout drawing and figure out from that if my changes would work, but I couldn’t tell. I needed to lay all the blocks out.

I can be impulsive. I just started sewing the leftover blocks into blocks of 4 and figured I would work out the details later. This isn’t always the best strategy, though it does makes for some interesting design challenges. Fortunately, as I said, in this case, it worked.

I don’t have all of the leftover blocks sewn together. There is also one block whose seam allowance is a bit off. It is bugging me, so I will need to fix that.

Spiderweb marked
Spiderweb marked

I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough of the background fabric, so I was very frugal while making the border blocks. This fabric is so old that there was probably not even a whisper of a chance that I would be able to find this fabric again. I pieced parts together where I was short. It turned out that I had plenty of fabric in the end, but I am glad I was frugal. I don’t think anyone will notice my frugality.

Because the blocks are different (center and border) as well as oriented in different directions I marked each block with a number in the lower left hand corner. This tells me where to place the block and in what orientation I should position it. I often do this, if I find a layout I like and I want to position certain blocks or colors specially.

In the “Spiderweb marked” photo, you can also see how I added two more blocks to fill in so the gap where the border blocks will go did not look quite so gaping.

Spiderweb new column
Spiderweb new column

I always hope that the quilt will draw up when I sew it together. The blocks have already drawn up a bit, but this will definitely be another monster.

It feels good to immerse myself in this project and I am excited that I have made such progress. I really didn’t expect to have so much done by today. I wish I could just spend a week doing nothing but sewing. I don’t know if that experience would get this mania out of my system, but it might lessen the feelings a bit. Perhaps such a focused time would make the feelings less special. I suspect having a week of time where I didn’t have to do anything but sew would make the mania worse.