Jungle Magnolia Top Finished

 Hi all -

Sorry I missed my weekly post last week! I spent the week in Kansas City helping my sister clean out her basement. We got a lot done and she was very happy so it was a good week! But not a lot of crafting done while I was there.

My highest priority when I got back was my Jungle Magnolia Block of the Month designed by Judy Niemeyer. I had just started on the last month before I left for KC. My goal was to get it finished for this blog post (which is why this post is a day late). It was going along swimmingly on the first unit for the month, then I made a big mistake when doing the trimming.

Jungle Magnolia - Trimming Mistake

I trimmed the curve of this block on the sewing line rather than the trimming line. Obviously, I needed a break both to get my brain back in order and to figure out how to fix this. I took a hot bath and thought about it. I knew I could tape the paper back in place, remove the bad piece of fabric and add a new one. But the problems were whether I had enough replacement fabric and how to get the correct shape for the replacement piece. I looked through the fabric scraps and I did have a piece that was big enough. I was happy to find this since I didn't want to add an extra seam if I didn't need to. For the pattern for the fabric piece I needed to do more thinking. With Judy Niemeyer patterns, you basically destroy the pattern as you make the quilt. So I needed to figure out how to reconstruct the shape with what I had. My first thought was to trace the piece from the paper in the above picture. This would work, but I would have to remember to add the seam allowance on the bottom of the piece and it would be hard to trace with the fabric attached to it. Then I remembered that I hadn't taken my recycling in yet so I would have the pieces of the original cutting pattern in my paper scraps. I dug through the paper scraps and found pieces that I could tape together to make a new cutting pattern. 

Jungle Magnolia - Reclaimed Cutting Template

Jungle Magnolia - Reclaimed Cutting Template Close-Up

I then removed the old piece of fabric from the unit.

Jungle Magnolia - Bad Piece Removed

And added the new piece of fabric to the unit.

Jungle Magnolia - New Piece Added

When. adding the replacement fabric, I had to be careful to fold back the paper pattern so it wouldn't get caught in the seam because there was fabric from the other pieces in the unit that would be trimmed away in a later step when the paper was trimmed. I was then able to do the trimming as specified in the pattern (using the correct trimming lines!) and finish the units.

Jungle Magnolia - Completed A2 Units

I also needed to think about why I made this trimming mistake twice in this quilt. I've never had this problem before. But I think the problem is that for the straight edges you line up the 1/4" line on the ruler with the seam line when trimming, but then for the curved edges you cut on the trim line without using a ruler. Since I'm concentrating on the seam line for the straight edge, that's still on my mind when I move to the curved edge. Hopefully, that realization will help me avoid this mistake in the future! I then moved on to the A1 units.

Jungle Magnolia - Completed A1 Units

Now all I had to do was assemble everything! And here is the final quilt top:

Jungle Magnolia - Completed Top

I really love how it turned out! Interestingly, I don't really like the fabrics when looking closely at the quilt, but I really love them from a distance. Now that it's finished, I need to purchase the binding fabric since that wasn't included in the kit. It seemed pretty obvious from the beginning that the black that is used for the internal corners in the quilt should be the binding to continue that effect, but I wanted to see the final product to be sure. And now I'm sure so I need to pick up some of that fabric while it's still available. I also need to get fabric for the backing. I like pieced backings so I plan to use some of the scraps in the backing, but this quilt is big (99"x99") so I'll need some big pieces of fabric to finish the back. I'll probably get some more of the border fabrics for that. I could use some other fabrics in my stash for the backing, but this is such an eye-popping quilt that I think I want the back to match the front.

I've also made some progress on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse. 

Kalme Throw

I was able to make some progress on this project while I was in KC, although not much progress since I was pretty tired when I wasn't working on the basement! 

Nancy