I finished up the vertical strips yesterday and started the quilt-as-you-go method of sewing them together today. It’s slow going. As I’ve always said, my ability to match seams in bargello quilts is quite frankly abysmal, so nothing lines up properly. You’d think that because I strip-pieced the sky, all of those seams would at least line up, but noooo. I literally don’t know how to make these things any better than what I’ve done. And I have little patience or motivation to go back and fix anything. Fortunately, the results look good from a distance, and I’m not looking to enter any fancy shows where people will be getting up close and judging my work anytime soon.
I started in the middle of the quilt and started working towards the right side, so I was working with the bottom half of what was on the design wall. I got about three quarters of the way through that bottom half, plugging away in front of Christmas movies and football games, when I realized that the very dark sky blues that I’d used at the top and the bottom of the quilt…are not the same. I used one from the beginning, and then switched to a darker one later, and then I switched back. Completely unknowingly. I started assembling the quilt using the pieces of the darker of the two colors, which is in the middle vertical strips. And then I sewed a strip onto the quilt that had the lighter of the two blues, as I got closer to the right edge, and I noticed it then. See if you can tell the difference.
Yep.
So now what? My sense is that I’ve been looking at these strips for weeks, in lots of different light, and I’ve not noticed a thing. So…since there’s precedent of leaving two different colors in the same spot, I’m probably going to go in that direction. Replacing any of them at this point would be a LOT of work. If it’s not a glaring error, I’m going to run with it and hope that no one but me notices.
I’m really glad that, after my adventure running out of one blue for this quilt, I got extra fabric for the Hus Ved Havet quilt. Need a 1” strip? I’ll take a quarter of a yard, please!