Doing What Mom Says

I finally finished Month 3's homework from my year-long Square-in-a-Square class tonight. I'm actually on Month 4 but Month 3 gave me fits because I ran out of background fabric before completing all four blocks we were supposed to do, so it ended up languishing on my cutting table before I had the time and energy to deal with it.

Finally tonight, acting under my prime directive to Avoid Reverse Sewing At All Costs, I made the pieces for a fourth block using a different background fabric, and then scattered the pieces through all four blocks. So now I've got four blocks, all with mostly the same background fabric and two pieces with different background. Kind of nifty, as long as I ignore my "must be orderly and make sense" side.

But that wasn't What Mom Said. You see, Month 2's homework blocks turned out very pretty from a fabric point of view, and I like the block itself, but due to plentiful bias edges, the blocks were whonked. Bowing, uneven edges abounded. I believe these were the blocks that were the subject of a previous post, named something like "When you can see it coming". I've debated for some time whether to pull the outside strips back off and redo them, but see my prime directive above.

Finally, tonight, after I finished the other blocks and was putting everything up on my design wall to check my progress to date, I heard my mother's voice in my head. "Block them," she was saying. "Pin them down and steam the h*ll out of them." Well, Mom doesn't typically use the h-e-double-hockey-sticks word, although I'm sure if I'd paid more attention while she was in her sewing room while I was growing up I probably would've heard them. I think every quilter has her potty-mouth side when dealing with bias edges. In any case, Mom has taught me every trick in the book to cover some mistakes and make other ones look intentional. This time, her words about the usefulness of a good, hot shot of steam to bring blocks into line were ringing in my head.

So I did. I pinned every one of those blocks down on my marked pressing pad until it began to look like a medieval torture device for heretic fabric, doused them with coats of spray starch, and then went after them with as much steam as my iron (handily named "SteamXpress") could punch out.

My dog went into hiding. She's not keen on my iron (it's fallen on her head a few times so she's understandably concerned), and she's even less keen when it's a fire-breathing dragon iron. But now the iron has been put to rest and I've stacked every heavy book I could find on my shelves on top of the tortured blocks in hopes that they'll straighten up and fly right by tomorrow morning, returned to orthodoxy. Medieval practices over, my dog has slunk back to her bed next to my computer desk, still eyeing the iron warily in case it should lunge at her from its perch in another unwarranted attack.

Let's see if Mom was right. I certainly hope so, since throughout my efforts tonight I was using this as an object lesson to my almost-18-year-old son who was sitting in the same room playing a computer game. "See? Even at 43 I'm following my mother's advice. Always do what your Mom says, son, and you'll never go wrong." If the blocks don't turn out nicely square tomorrow morning, guess what? I won't be telling him!