How not to make a quilt

I’m so pleased with myself. I finished my first quilt. It’s a pillow quilt, where you have a small quilt you can snuggle up in when you watch TV on a cold winter’s night, and then you can fold it up and tuck it into a pocket and it becomes a throw pillow by day. I found the pattern here.

I learned a few things along the way.

1. I have read that you should measure twice and cut once. I think you should measure twice, double check that you are actually starting with the ruler at 0. Do not rely on your poor math skills to remember that 2-11 is 9”; you will forget at some point and think it is 11”. Measure again. Then cut. I was supposed to make a 16 ½ inch square. It ended up being 15 ½ X 15. I tried to correct this by making my borders wider, but still miscalculated and ended up having three borders, the last a very thin rim around the rest of the pillow.
2. Make your borders a little longer than what you need, whenever possible, then trim off the excess. I can never measure accurately enough for the borders to fit perfectly the first time.
3. Sketch out the design and color it in with pencils or markers before buying fabric. This will avoid pink beside pink and light blue beside light blue. I just bought fabrics sort of at random, taking care that they would go together, but did not consider which colors would end up beside each other.
4. Blocks will never be perfectly square. It’s a good thing I am a laissez-faire Aquarian, or I would still be trying to square up the fabric.
5. Cats think they are helping, but aren’t, really.
6. Masking tape can be your best friend. It can hold everything down when you are ready to baste. It can pick up loose threads, lint, and little black cat hairs.

Binding needs a bit of work. It’s good enough for my own personal use, but it does not lie flat all the way around; it bunches up in places. I found wonderful instructions online to make continuous bias tape. I got confused with all the square root stuff, though, so I tried to devise my own way to figure out how much fabric to cut to make the length of tape I want. Since I had a bout 6” left over, I think I did it correctly. My figuring is as follows:

1. Measure the edges of the quilt and add them all up. For ease of figuring, let's pretend our quilt is 25" on each side. 25+25+25+25=100. Our bias tape needs to be at least 100" long. But we need to add some inches for going around corners and to allow for messing up calculations. Let's shoot for 120" of continuous bias tape.
2. Check the pattern you are using for the width of tape you are supposed to be using. My pattern says 1 7/8". I actually rounded up to 2”, as it’s easier to calculate and allows me to wander a bit when cutting (have I mentioned I cannot cut a straight line, not even with a ruler and rotary cutter?).
3. Figure out the usable width of the fabric you want to use. Let's say for ease of figuring that it's 40" wide.
4. To figure out the number of strips you will get out of this fabric, divide the width of the finished strip by the width of the fabric. In this case, 40/2=20. Therefore, you will get 20 2" strips.
5. Now you need to figure out how long your strips will be (and, therefore, the length of fabric you will cut). Take the total length of bias tape you will need, 120", and divide by the number of strips you will get from the fabric, 20. 120/20=6. Thus, your fabric length will be 6".
6. Now, add ½” to all sides of the rectangle you are about to cut. You do need to remember to allow for seam allowances. Your width will be 40 ½” and your length will be 6 ½”. If you really think you will mess up, add a bit to either the length or width.
7. Cut out your rectangle, then proceed with the instructions for making continuous bias tape.

The quilt, when finished, is supposed to be folded into thirds, then folded four times, then stuffed into the pocket to form a pillow. Here is how it really works:

1. Lay quilt on floor.
2. Remove cat, fold one long side over about 1/3 of the way.
3. Remove cat, grab other long side.
4. Remove cat.
5. Remove cat.
6. Remove claws from fabric.
7. Give up and lie down beside cat.

The front of the quilt

The back (the black blob is Oliver inspecting the quilt)

Oliver is testing the quilt

The pillow