There comes a time in every quilter’s life where nothing seems to go right and it all falls apart…. The quarter-inch seam allowances aren’t matching up, you’ve burnt your fingers on the vicious hot steam pouring out from the iron when pressing your seams, the quilt is too big to fit on the ironing board, the pattern that you thought looked easy becomes the pattern from hell etc…
Today I share with you my top 10 hates when it comes to quilting. The worst thing is, most of these have happened to me in the past week….
DISCLAIMER: Prepare yourself for a whole lot of whinging!
>Hate 1: Puckering while Quilting<
Every quilter knows that a flat smooth quilt is a good quilt; a flat smooth quilt is a neat quilt; a flat smooth quilt is a ‘professional’ quilt.
And yet, after endless attempts of getting every inch of my ‘quilt sandwich’ flat and smooth after basting and ironing, unwanted puckers evade the surface, leaving me frustrated, annoyed and determined to get the most flattest, smoothest quilt surface in the history of quilting!
But then I think, ‘Pfft, fat chance! You’ll never please your internal OCD Monster when working with a medium that moves so freely like fabric does! Silly Billy!’
>Hate 2: The ‘Laws’ of Pressing<
Law One -Setting the seam: The process of setting a seam requires one to press on the seam to ‘set’ or ‘anchor’ the thread into the fabric before pressing the seam open to one side, thus resulting in a flat seam.
Yeh, I do that!! But nine-times-out-of-ten the seam on the back usually has other ideas, folding over the opposite way leaving my seam bulky and twisted!
I then have to re-do the whole process, which screws up my rhythm and usually results in a good steam burn because my frustration blinds me of my common sense around hot angry irons!
Law Two – Quilter’s Must Always Press to the Dark Side:
Not always necessary.
Stuff the rules!
I’m doing it my way!
>Hate 3: Flat Seams will be the End of Me!<
The time when all seams need to be sewn flat in all the same direction and there’s always that one little #@&$!% that does not want to conform!
‘Damn it! Where’s my unpicker!’
>Hate 4: Scrap or not Scrap? That is the question.<
You know what I’m talking about – those little pieces of fabric that are too small for any real use BUT still maybe useful if you were to ever get time to make 5-cent piece size hexies or some weird fabric collage….
***But secretly you don’t want to get rid of any fabric scraps because you’re a serial hoarder and don’t want hurt the fabric’s feelings….just sayin’.
>Hate 5: The Joys of Cutting with a Rotary Blade<
So you’ve set your fabric correctly on the cutting mat, the ruler is in the perfect place at the perfect measurement and you cut – yay!
No.
The cut has been made but you didn’t press hard enough on the rotary blade and now you have those few little strands of thread that don’t want to be parted from the Mother fabric.
Thus resulting in an edge that is botched and hacked, has pulled threads and has left you in tears on the floor because you have weak puny muscles that prevent you from simply cutting a line in a piece of fabric.
The world can seem very unfair sometimes!
>Hate 6: The Worst time for a Quilting Craving<
There’s nothing worse than the self-inflicting torture of quilting on a hot summer’s day. I find nothing fun about sweating under a heavy quilt just to soothe my weird urge of feeding three layers of differing orientated fibres through a sewing machine.
And yet I still do it.
Every.
Single.
Year.
>Hate 7: The bobbin running out at the worst possible moment!<
Need I say more…??
>Hate 8: The Stash Equation: I don’t need it, but I want it.<
I know I don’t need any more fabric. My family knows it as well as my crafty friends.
And yet I keep buying it.
I have no room for it.
Boy, I don’t even have enough money for it!
But it keeps rolling on through the door and into my stash.
Why only today I bought two new fat quarters.
Why?
Because-they-were-a-D-O-L-L-A-R!! Who in their right mind would give up such a special like that!?
Nuh-ahh, not me!
I found room for it.
>Hate 9: Pesky Joins<
No matter how well I secure my joins (that is: two seams coming together and sitting at a neat T-Junction) with pins, there is always one that just does not want to match up no matter how well I’ve measured and sewn the pieces of fabrics together. Thus resulting in mismatched block joins and seams that look like a dog’s hind leg!
Boo, I say to you!
>Hate 10: Runaway Quilts<
That moment when you’re trying to feed a quilt through the sewing machine but it keeps runaway from you due to the sheer size and bulk of it, ruining your attempt at quilting a decent straight line.
If I were super-human and could morph eight arms out of my torso, maybe then would I be able to achieve the near impossible of perfect quilting on a domestic sewing machine.
Regrettably, I do not live in a Marvel comic so I will need to settle on rare but occasional burst of fits of frustration to get me through the dreaded ‘runaway quilt’ quilting phase.
End whinge.
And yet, after that mindless rant and rave, I could not think of one thing in the world that I LOVE and that brings me more joy than quilting (apart from my family, nephews, friends, my dog, God, food, my car, my independence and my BED!).
The passion is hard to explain but can be easily seen simply through the dedication I have to my blog.
I love quilting and my life would be simply colourless and boring without it.
Simple.
Happy Sewing! xx
3and3quarters 