Sunday, July 24, 2011

Crafting is sooo like Coding...

More progress on the Settlers of Catan quilt. Have the "ocean" tiles all put together. The whole thing is a little larger then 5'x5'. I do believe there's enough space at each corner for people to sit and not obscure the tiles.

Cut the tiles out and laid them down. Am angry at myself for not planning ahead better- I totally over-purchased tile fabric. Next step is to get some double sided bias tape and afix the backing to each tile. So, yeah, that's probably going to take some time... (the thought of making my own bias tape was quickly discarded).

After/as the tiles are backed I need to find something lovely to be the back of the quilt. Also need to find bias tape for the edging of the quilt-- I may make my own for this segment. Also aquire batting. Then it's the painful pinning and sewing of quilt front and back together... Ick. And then there's the whole actual 'quilting' bit! Double ick! Only at the very end do I sew down the snaps... so, yeah. That's a while away.



Have several clever ideas for further embellishments on the quilt/game but am trying to focus on the "now" and not get distracted by the "later". Am already kicking around another quilt idea- not good.

The title of this post is not sarcasm. Planning out the quilt and planning out projects at work feels very similar. There's all this pre-planning that you *should* do... but you can easily be foolish enough not to do it and just dive in. There's the same potential for sloppiness in process. The end product is a nice idea but secretly all the real fun is at the beginning during the planning/hypothetical stages. Perhaps this idea could be applied to more things then just crafts and code, but for me that's where I see the strongest similarities. There's certainly nothing like that in sketching for me. Or writing, or talking to people, exercise/sports, or what minuscule cooking I've ever done. Working with crochet in fact lacks the strong similarities-- it's primarily when dealing with fabric. Measure twice, cut once. Write the damn tests before you write the code. Same thing.

You can see how unfortunately similar the "desert" (swiggle lines) is to the "fields" (squares in squares)... I'm still grumpy that my green fields fabric was so completely shot down by everyone...

Also, have I mentioned yet how utterly stupid 1/4' seam allowance is? Just so ya'll know...

2 comments:

  1. I think it's the same for cooking, sometimes. If you don't plan in advance you have to use whatever is in the fridge and then you end up with a cheese sandwich. Or if you don't read the whole recipe before you start cooking, you end up throwing things together instead of preparing everything nicely chopped ahead of time.

    If you need something to do with the extra fabric, I'd be happy to make some napkins out of it. Boring, I know, but somehow satisfying.

    I'm still very impressed that the ocean part of the quilt has come together so quickly! (Probably from your point of view it doesn't seem so quick because you're actually doing the work, but from outside it seems fast.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is beautiful. My family loves Catan, especially my oldest brother. I've actually been trying to find a Catan quilt of some sort online to get him for Christmas, and I really don't know if you'd be interested in taking requests.. But if you'd be willing, could you possibly name a price you might accept for just a small version of this quilt (for a Christmas present)? I mean, just the land tiles with some sea--like in the second picture you posted. If not, I completely understand. At the very least, I thank you for posting this wonderful work of art!

    ReplyDelete