Contest of Wills

Wind in the Whiskers and I have decided to go on tour with the WWE. It isn't just that it's a big quilt that requires wrestling it around whenever I try to do any single thing. It is that it has challenged me to a showdown in the most aggressive way possible. This is the quilt yesterday.

And this is an actual picture of me, yelling "Bring it!"

Yes, we take quilting seriously here at the Three Cats Ranch. The only thing more serious is our level of sugar consumption. But that's another blog post.

Fortunately, I've had my cat with me throughout this ordeal. I swear he can hear me unfolding the quilt for a binding session from around the corner, down the stairs, around another corner, and up into the kitty clubhouse. As I unfolded it yesterday, I said to Mike, "What do you bet Smitty shows up in about 30 seconds?" Sure enough...

It took me three sessions of hand stitching to finish this binding. Smitty was there for every single stitch. Yesterday I needed to finish one whole side and about one-third of another, and that sucker was finished....the binding, anyway.

It was just after noon, and so there was plenty of time in the day to continue wrestling with the quilt. But first, I needed to finish making a back for the Solstice quilt. This was the fabric I had in mind for a center panel.

I needed an additional 15 inches of width for the back, and so that worked both to make it wider and to separate the patterned fabric. I didn't want to have to mess with matching up that pattern. Without spreading out the whole 96 x 96 inch backing, you can see how it will look.

Okay, so let's get back to my nemesis, Wind in the Whiskers.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I still had applique pieces squirreled away in a bin that needed to go somewhere on the quilt. I decided to start with the instructions for Section 1. Oh yes, and there are corrections. And not just this sheet that came with the pattern...there were also more corrections on the website. 😡 (Mad face.) And I want to draw your particular attention to the section underlined in pink that says "Refer to the full quilt directions found in Block 4." There are seven blocks to the entire quilt. How does it make any sense at all to put the finishing instructions with Block 4? (Insert rant  here about the $$$$ spent, coupled with the crappiness of McKenna Ryan patterns.)

Okay, so let's just get down to business and quit whining, shall we? Fortunately, there was a picture of the whole quilt to use as reference.

You can see in the image below the sections where my quilt was incomplete.

Starting at the right, it now seems obvious there is a disembodied branch and greenery to the right of the cat's tail.

And keeping in mind that this is Section 1, I'm now looking at the pattern for Section 4 to find the piece I need.

Fortunately, I saved all the fabric scraps while I was making the various sections, and I found a piece for the greenery easy enough. The flowers were already made. Then I laid them out on the quilt and arranged them to cover the offending disembodied section...

and then I fused them down.

Moving to the left, I took a look at the middle section.

Then, I found the template for the corresponding greenery...

and then laid that out to complete the picture. Again, the flowers and the chickadee sitting on a branch were already made.

Moving to the extreme left, there were a couple of sections missing here.

These were the pieces I had left.

To the right of the bird there was to be a template much too large to fit in the space I had for it, and so I went back to the original blocks (keeping in mind that I now have three sections of pattern pieces open on my work table), and made a variation of them. They were flat on one side, like the edges of a jigsaw puzzle. I simply rounded their edges to look more like leaves, and then placed those two small pieces there.

To the left of the bird there was a larger piece where I could use the branch and the three remaining flowers.

With those fused down, there was just this three dimensional butterfly to deal with.

It was supposed to look like a butterfly in flight, but it went together weirdly. When I had the pieces laid out correctly, I tried fusing them down. Only the body of the butterfly is fusible, and it wasn't going to hold all five pieces in place. I decided to pin them down and then I hauled it all upstairs to where Eliza lives to stitch them down.

Even with pins, I couldn't get it upstairs in one piece without having it come all apart. No worries...I tried holding it in place and stitching it, but to no avail. It simply wasn't going to work, and so I found that stupid butterfly a new job, fluttering around the interior of my wastebasket. It won't matter, I told myself. And then I took the quilt downstairs to take a picture of the pieces I'd just finished stitching. Except for the clothesline, all the pieces are in place now.

But that butterfly wasn't in my wastebasket...it was fluttering around inside my head...mocking me. "Quitter! What's the matter? Letting a little quilted butterfly defeat you? Weenie!"

So that got me thinking...there was already a three-dimensional butterfly on another section of the quilt. That one withstood all the wadding, folding, unfolding, stitching, cats, and everything else I threw at it, and it was still right where I'd stitched it down at the very beginning of the top-stitching process. What was different about it?

Well...it was made from just three pieces. The top wings, the bottom wings, and the body, so it was easy enough to stitch the little body down and hold everything in place. So...not to be defeated...I made another one like it and then stitched it to its spot on the left side of the quilt.

(Insert music from Queen here: WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU!!!) Yeah...and that was how that wrestling match ended.

Who's wearing the championship belt now, Quilt? Huh? Who? Yeah...that's me. And look at you! Flat on the floor.

You would be right to worry about the sanity of a person who gets in arguments with quilts. Perhaps McKenna Ryan has some liability here for driving me insane.

Okay, so today I'll be tackling the clothesline. I think I've pulled myself together enough after yesterday's session. If tomorrow's post reads like word salad, you'll know it was a bad day.