Stepping Out Of My Comfort Zone

I've been sewing, casually, for about 39 years.  Sprinkled in that time there have been spans where I sewed more rigorously.  When I sew, it's usually things like this.

I made the pants, vest and shirt as kind of a wearable resume when I applied for the position at Philmont.

While working at Philmont most of my sewing focuses on repairs like this.

The amazingly popular 'monkey butt patch' (patent pending) which I did about 3-4 a week of over the the summer.

Also I had a chance at making practical objects.  Curtains were the most common, but also things like a set of circa 1907 baseball bags for the Pueblano logging camp.  (I did cheat and give them a modern zipper for filling them.)

The bags were made out of two layers of old tent canvas.  Philmont has a ton of old destroyed tents they are always looking to recycle.  Here I used some for the backing for a eye protection holder for one of the shooting ranges.  I think I made four of these.

I did an earlier post here, where I showed some of the things I've made while at home. Also I made my wife a shoulder bag to replace her all time favorite one that was finally ready to be retired.

I don't claim to be an excellent sewer.  Passable, sure, but I'm slow and easily frustrated.  My projects at home usually take days if not weeks to complete.  At Philmont I worked faster just because there was a couple of years of backlog when I got there.  But it was also a 'job' so working quickly while maintaining quality was pretty much expected.  At home, it's another story.

One thing I have never done on a sewing machine, or even by hand, is quilting.  Well this past August I went to the Northeast TOGA in Maine.  A major part of the activities is the 'block exchange' where people trade quilting blocks they have made on their treadle machines over the past year.  Each block exchange has a theme.  I forget what that event's theme was, but at the end of the exchange there were blocks left over.  Those of us (me alone) who hadn't made any were welcomed to still participate and pick some blocks for ourselves.

Well that bit of guilt, taking without giving, was enough for me to decide that I wasn't going to be a non-blocker next year.

It's been so cold here for the past week or so, and I've been sick enough to not want to do any work out in the sewing room.  Finally today the cabin fever set in and I had to do something other than taking apart the 221 once again.  So I reached out to the NETOGA mailing list to get a reminder of what the parameters of this year's block exchange was going to be.  Blocks based on our initials.

Once again, I'm clueless about quilting.  I started googling to find out anything about block making that would use my initials.  Colors, block designs, anything.  Colors was pretty much a wash. Desert and fuchsia were about the best I could come up with. So I looked at block styles.  Pretty quickly I hit on my winner.  Dutchman's puzzle block using flying geese.

I watched and watched and watched all the videos I could find about how to make this.  And after about 3 hours of watching other people I decided to give it a go.

The wife helped we pick out some sacrificial cloth for my initial test block.  The Spongebob print was an easy choice.  The other fabric she pulled out and stated, "I never want anything made out of this."

I could go through the whole process of making the block, but others have done it much better. The video tutorial I relied on the most for making the 'waste free flying geese' was this one by Melanie Ham.  Putting the flying geese into the dutchman's puzzle didn't really require any tutorials.

So here it is, my first ever quilting block.  Made, treadling on Black Swan.

Real quilters will be able to pick out all the mistakes that I didn't see until maybe and hour after I finished my victory dance.  One mistake that was glaringly obvious during the whole process was the fact that I stitched the fabric for the 4 left geese front to back instead of front to front.  Oh well, it was a practice block.

Now I just need to find some desert and fuschia material.