Back to the Passacaglia and of Course a New Stack and Whack

 

Well, I finally got back to the final bits of the Passacaglia sewing in the few pieces around the outside filling in areas that needed a bit more.  Then came the chore I was not at all looking forward to and had put off as long as possible.  Because I couldn't believe the pattern would have you cut off large areas that you had painstakingly pieced, I am appliquing the piece down on a dark green background which will take forever I am afraid.  But FIRST, I needed to get rid of all the paper on all of those tiny pieces that the of which the quilt is made!  I am sure they amount to 1000's.

My first step was to soak the whole thing in warm water in my bathtub.  This was particularly scary as I used a lot of dark hand dyes and sometimes I am  not as good about washing enough times as I should be and I was afraid of some serious bleeding.  I tried taking the paper pieces out kneeling by the tub but only lasted about 5 minutes.  I then grabbed a fairly large plastic box and wrung out the top as best I could and put it into the box and returned to my sewing room where I proceeded to take out the pieces.  The good news is that the glue that I used  which was Roxanne's Baste-it  worked very well.  I had used some other glue earlier and luckily had only used it on a few pieces as it did not work.  The freezer paper that I had ironed down released immediately so that was also good.  Also the dissolvable thread I had used initially also dissolved completely.  

I have probably spent a good 10 hours so far taking out paper!!  The first couple of days I did it with the wet top.  After I got out all the larger pieces,  I decided to throw the quilt into the dryer with the tiny tiny star points still mostly unpulled as they were super difficult to get out.  I was surprised that even fairly wet, it dried without too much trouble and didn't leave a bunch of paper in the dryer (which is why I didn't use the washing machine}.  I then sat in front of the tv and started trying to get the papers out of those tiny pieces (3/4 of an inch by about 3/8 inch}.  There are 100s and 100s of these pieces and I have spent at least four hours so far pulling out the papers.  I have discovered it is much much easier to pull out the dry pieces of paper and would definitely somehow dry the top if I were ever foolish enough to do this kind of quilt again.  Tweezers also help getting into those tiny areas and it is not a bad way to spend time in front of the television as it doesn't take a lot of concentration, just searching the top for the papers.  As the pieces are so small the seam allowances cover up the papers so you have to go by feel!

I found four small panels left over from a quilt  made a few years ago and decided it was time to do something with it and since I have been on a stack and whack kick, here are the blocks.

 Here is the original quilt using the panels which faced in  opposite directions!                                 

 It was a little unusual as there were only three repeats so I alternated on the hexie blocks!  For some reason I had 4 leftover panels that were all facing in the same direction which is what I used for the blocks above.  Good thing I keep my quilts on Pinterest as I couldn't find the blog entry with this quilt on it!

I had originally planned to only use the reddish orange, green and yellow but for some balance, decided to add the purple.  This was my first iteration which was okay.

For the final version, I did switch things up a bit so it is very balanced!  Because it is only 33 inches square, I will need to add some borders to make it a baby quilt.

At first, was only going to add the green and purple which was okay.

I finally decided to go with a thin strip of yellow -- I always seem to do this!

Isn't it truly amazing how different this quilt is from the original quilt using these blocks from the same panel!!