Drunken Dragons Progress Report: Four Rows Assembled, Eleven More to Go!

First Four Rows of Blocks Assembled

Oh yes, in between all the baking and Christmasing and gifting and champagne drinking, I have been making slow but steady progress on Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt.  If you missed the earlier posts on this project, you can catch up by clicking here.  I'm trying to sew up one row of blocks one day, then seam that row to the adjacent row on the following day.  That's how 30 minutes a day times lots (and lots) of days eventually will result in a new quilt for Lars's bed.

Puppy Rabbits Sleeping in my Studio

Don't you just love how my one-year-old Rottweiler puppies, Otto and Lulu, crash on the floor of my studio to keep me company?  I love it when they snore.  When they pass what I've heard affectionately referred to as "Rotten Gas," well, I don't love that so much, but I keep a scented candle in my studio in case of emergencies.  ;-)

Back to the quilt!

Nested seam allowances, pinned on either side of the seams

I wanted to show you how I'm matching up and pinning my seam allowances as I assemble the blocks.  As I made each block, I pressed the curved seam allowance towards whichever fabric was darker to prevent a dark seam allowance from showing through a lighter fabric from the right side of the finished quilt.  So now as I'm sewing the blocks together, sometimes I get lucky and I have seam allowances pressed in opposite directions so I can nest them together like you see in this photo -- but other times, the seam allowances have to stack up on top of one another and there's a much greater likelihood that the seams won't match up perfectly. 

...Resulting in Perfectly Aligned Seams!

I'm trying not to be too obsessive about making everything perfect on this quilt.  I always try to do the best I can, because things worth doing are worth doing well.  Also, you get better faster when you always do your best work.  However, I know that Lars is going to chew on the top edge of the quilt when he's falling asleep, because that's just what he does.  And I know that I want to work on my free-motion quilting skills with this quilt, and if I obsess and rip out stitches and resew each seam until the quilt top can withstand the scrutiny of a magnifying glass, then it will be that much harder to get up the nerve to lower the feed dogs and subject this quilt to my free-motion learning curve.

Not Perfect, but Good Enough!

Here, see?  These seams are slightly misaligned, and I declare that they are going to stay that way because they are Good Enough!

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, with Chess Club for the boys before school and a meeting with a new client for me in the afternoon.  Then Friday is Lars's birthday sleepover party (his birthday is December 26th, but we wait until after the holidays have passed for his party with his friends).  I anticipate that no one will get any sleep at my house on Friday night, and I'm already planning to put a movie on for our boys on Saturday afternoon so we can have a nap once the guests have gone home.  Wish me luck!