The Crinkle Quilt, Day 10

This weekend was chock full of activity.  Lots of family and friends to visit, and little Darcy even went on a swing for the first time!  I felt like such a slacker because I didn't get much sewing done, but then The Husband reminded me that I wasn't slacking off, I just was doing more important things.

I was finally able to indulge in the beautiful ruffles late yesterday evening.  After finishing the ruffled strips I matched them up to the flat focus fabric.  I had to tighten the ruffling with just two of the strips, but the other two were so ruffled that I had to loosen them up quite a bit for them to be long enough for the focus fabric.

Palak mentions that when matching the ruffled strips to the focus fabric, she likes to make sure that the pieced sections are more like squares than like trapezoids.  What she should have said, in bold, italicized, underlined, flashing neon letters, highlighted in orange and in the largest font anyone ever invented was, "Sunnygal, I know you're going to want to kick this pattern up a notch, maybe do some experimenting with the size or the shapes, but making the ruffles like squares instead of trapezoids is not so much a suggestion as it is an order, that if you disobey even a smidge will send you into your worst sewing nightmare imaginable, full of unmatched edges, pins, basting stitches, more pins, fabric readjustments and even more pins.  I am trying to save you from yourself.  Did I mention the pins?"

And of course since it didn't say that, I went ahead with my trapezoidial, rhomboidical, come-what-mayical shapes, because I thought it'd look more rustic.

And just like Imaginary Major Palak warned, I was sent swirling into a whirlpool of fabric worse-case scenarios.  Including the pins.

It all started out well enough, with no problems sewing one ruffled strip to one flat strip.  But then I tried to match one ruffled-flat set to another ruffled-flat set and since the pieces weren't square, I had to readjust and pin down the ruffles just so the entire strip would match up.  Otherwise, it would be longer on one end and shorter on the other.

Even with all my pinning one set ended up off by a few inches, so I had to undo the seams and start again.  Sigh.

I did finally get them all sewn up right.  I trimmed the seams by 1/4" just so it looked a little cleaner.  I also trimmed each end of the quilt top, and then pressed the seams between the flat and ruffled strips.

I'm happy with how it's coming along.  But next time I'll listen to Imaginary I-Told-You-So Major Palak.