Two Quilts, the curse, and the same 60 Degree ruler

It’s funny how old is new is old is new, right?  Recently, I’ve been seeing a great many patterns using triangles to make hexies, and it reminded me of something I had made in late 2004 or early  2005.  It’s not a set of quilts I share very often because I think they’re cursed.

I can’t find the pattern I used for the top quilt (I threw it away, being covered in angry cat pee), and an internet search couldn’t find it either.

But I can tell you how I cut the strips, which I’ve used for several other quilts including this one which looks like hexies but is, in fact, all triangles to make the bottom quilt:

1. Sew together 2 1/2″ x WOF strips, with your solid on one side, and your various fabric strips on the other.  1/4″ SEAM ALLOWANCE IS CRUCIAL. Iron seam toward the color strip.
2. Use a 60 degree ruler you buy from Joann’s with a coupon (have I mentioned how much I adore the Joann’s app??). Cut out triangles, alternating your ruler orientation from top to bottom to top as you go.  You’ll use almost every bit of your strip.   Be very careful not to stray. Every once in a while, true up your triangles.
3. You should have alternating triangles now, some with a base that is a solid color, and some where the point is a solid color.  Everyone has been doing hexies lately, but you can also make the pinwheels and the tiny triangle pattern (looks like a soccer ball to me).  There are no Y seams, just long strips.  For the soccer ball pattern (the quilt in the bottom) you’ll just lay out your triangles in the orientation you like, and sew the strips.  It’s really simple.

So, anyway, about that curse.

I had done all the work, and had been so very meticulous about making sure all my cuts and whatnot were exact and triangles were true, and was super happy with the color choices and how things were smoothly coming together, when I got pregnant.  We moved to a new house 2 weeks after my son was born, in an area where we knew noone, and it was a while before I ventured to the basement where my sewing room had been set up.  So far, so good.

When I *did* make it down there, I found that one of our cats apparently was super pissed at us and had decided to use the bag with my project stowed in it as his personal litter box, to show his displeasure.  And since I had a new baby and was essentially isolated and had no help, I didn’t notice until after the pins had gotten all rusty because there was nothing really in the basement.  Which means that all my cutting was for naught because I washed the whole damn pile, and all those lovely triangles became all wonky (which is why many of the points don’t match) And then I couldn’t find te pattern so I just went on memory of something I had read over a year before (the soccer pattern was somehow to be a border, but I couldn’t tell you how the hell it was supposed to go together).

That was the first part.  The second part of the curse was that I had learned to store everything in drawers (thank you Rubbermaid containers), but that only does so much good if you *shut* the drawers.  Otherwise a crotchety can will just so happen to be sitting up on top of them and oh, I don’t know, throw up into the open drawer.

The moral of this story?  Cats and babies will vomit on everything you love.  It was kind of a low point for me.  I washed and dried everything AGAIN, and then put the triangles away for another year, until I could bring myself to finish them off.  At that point, it was a vendetta project.  TAKE THAT, QUILTY PROJECT FROM HELL.

Cue the third curse, for the bottom quilt.  I was using it as a longarm practice quilt and somehow screwed up the bottoms, and didn’t have enough backing.  Lesson learned for sure.  But then I had to cut all the borders to match.  Sigh.  They win.

So that’s the story of the cursed quilts.  I triumphed in that they are finished and complete… but I want to make them again in different colors, this time with little to no drama.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  I still shiver a little, when I think about this.