The Cuckoo Bee

I hope you’re following along at home and completing all these steps real-time, reader.  As you recall, last time we ended with a 5 x 7 block of 12-inch fabric squares.  The next step, if you have decided against putting on a 4 1/2 inch muslin border, is to make the quilt sandwich.  First I masking-taped down the muslin back, roughly cut to sort of the right dimensions; on top of that I taped down the batting, similarly roughly cut; and on top of that I taped the quilt front.  Then I got out a whole bunch of embroidery floss and scattered it around the quilt surface to see which colors I liked.  I started this process at 10:00 last night because that was when the kids went to bed.  It was quite dark in our living room.

I also had decided yesterday on a red and pink trim and laid that out too so I could see how it interacted with the different embroidery floss.  I decided on red floss in the middle of each square and then alternated as I felt appropriate between white, very pale pink, and pale yellow for each corner and also halfway along each square’s side, so that the ties were 5.75 inches apart.  I brought in lamps from around the house to aid in this project as I became increasingly unable to distinguish between the three colors of floss that were not bright red.

Like other parts of the quilting process, this was repetitive in nature and pleasant/tiring.  There was a moment at each juncture where I called up whichever thread color should go at that point–that part was exciting.  The other exciting part was after sticking the needle through the front, batting, and back, and bringing it up a little ways away from where you enter, and then removing the needle–the moment of removing the needle is where I enjoyed this process the most, when you have the two little ties waiting to be secured with a surgeon’s knot.  That is like a square knot.  The instructions I read prior to doing this step indicated that you should scratch the needle across whatever surface you are working on (here our wood floor) to be sure you were through all three layers, which I did while wondering what I was doing to our recently refinished floor.  I never checked afterward so I can’t report on that. Moving along, periodically I would stop and give the ties a haircut so they ended up being about 3/4 inch long.

additional lamps here

I started at 10:00, as I mentioned, and at 12:30 I was a little more than halfway done.  I was able during this juncture to witness the scene that goes on nightly in our living room.  My husband habitually goes to sleep at 2 or 3 and I was never sure what he was up to.  Now I know that he spends these hours debating with me.  I kept going until 1:14, at which point I had 18 ties left to do and was crawling across the quilt on my knees and elbows as I tied.  This work is hard on the skeleton but you can’t really untape the sandwich from the floor until it’s all tied, because the purpose of tying is to keep everything flat and not bunch up–on the other hand, the children’s primary purpose in the morning, as I well knew last night, would be to leap onto the quilt and shred it/dance on grapes across its surface/rend it with their teeth/nails, so I tried to finish most of it before that happened.

unable to straighten spine at this point

I finished it in about ten minutes this morning, even with shouting at the kids while tying, but have no picture because I spirited away the quilt as soon as it was done.  Next:  I will sew the trim and attach it with the walking foot, so I must learn how to use the walking foot.  Goodbye, reader!