Making of a Maverick

Experimenting with the layout and embellishments

Yesterday was the big reveal day over at Twelve by Twelve.  Our latest challenge was Maverick and this one proved to be the hardest yet.  Not only was coming up with an idea a challenge (read about it here), but even the construction proved to be tricky.  It all started out fine.  I took advantage of the pile of already quilted and painted fabric in my cabinet and pulled out a pile of purples and greens.  I created a 20 x 12 grid of one inch squares and sewed them together with a zig zag stitch.  Tension was a bit of a problem, but not so bad I couldn't ignore it.  I finished sewing it together.   The back looked pretty bad and I didn't want any of that poor tension to come apart so I decided that I needed to fuse a piece of fabric on to cover it up.  That shouldn't have been so hard, but the fusible had other ideas.  I spent a good deal of time picking little pieces of backing paper off.  I know a lot you will recommend tying Misty Fuse.  Great idea, but at the time I had the bolt of Wonder Under and I wasn't going to wait for something to be shipped.  I will keep it in mind for next time.

Not so wonderful Wonder Under

Next step was to sew on a large fabric paper circle.  Should have been easy, but the sewing machine really went maverick.  I tried to sew on a fabric paper circle to contrast with that grid but the tension was completely off. I tried rethreading, changing the needle, changing the bobbin, turning it off and on and adjusting every setting possible.  It was not going to cooperate.  Finally, I broke down and switched machines so I could move on to the next step.  I should have just gone there in the beginning. Moving one machine off the desk and setting up the other only took a couple of minutes -- I was done in less than 5.  I'm not sure if it was laziness or stubbornness that kept me from giving in.  

The back of my fabric paper circle after countless experiments to get the tension correct

Once the back was on, I could move to the fun step of sewing on a stack of beads to brand each of those squares.  While planning the embellishment I laid out all the round beads so the different colors were spaced throughout the quilt, but when it came time to sew them on I couldn't stitch and keep them from moving.  I planned a little was I went, but really just hoped that I wouldn't end up with all the same beads when I got to the last few squares.  Happily, it all worked out!

The back

Neat rows of my branded (beaded) cows

The maverick fabric paper circle

Make sure to head over to the Twelve by Twelve blog and check out my finished quilt and all the other  Mavericks.  Despite the challenging theme, I think we all did a great job!