The South Rises Again

The Civil War isn't over everywhere, you know. There's still parts of this country where hot spots flare up every once in awhile.
Like my sewing room.
I didn't have this much trouble with my very first quilt! Or any other one I've ever made for that matter! These blocks ended up being such a biasy mess that I nearly wanted to burn the whole thing. There's at least 2 reasons for the mess - first is that the construction method I used left 12 little bias edged HST's on the outer edges of every single block. Those suckers only live to stretch. The second reason could be that I pieced them on 2 different machines - that could have been enough to throw everything haywire. The sashing strips were cut to the measurements of the first 10 or so blocks that were consistant in size, in this case 9 3/4 inches. And the first few rows were fine! As time went on tho, we had DEVELOPMENTS:
This is unsewn, just pinned to show the big difference. Some were a lot worse! I took each row and sprayed and steamed and pressed the mamajammer out of them, doing my level best to shrink 'em. For the most part it worked pretty well ----
Now at least they were in the same neighborhood, and I muddled through getting all the rows joined up. Some of the bigger blocks that are now surrounded by smaller sashing on 4 sides are really really bubbly!! After something like 4 days of intermittent frustration and a few choice %$#*!! at last I had the block body together. And the inside measurement thru the middle was about one and 1/4 inch shorter than those damn bias edges!!! Here's how I deal with inside borders that need to be "persuaded"
Lay it out carefully on the floor and use t-pins into the carpet to hold the border strip and top.
Then I kind of scooch my fingers around underneath to ease the fullness and pin the middle and pin and pin and pin and pin. So that went on SORT OF ok, but the border fabric I picked out was 2 inches too short and of course I didn't have any more. So I pieced it - what the heck, how much worse can it get? And eventually I had 2 borders on and laid it out to see how bad the bubbly blocks were:
YIKES!!! Really Really bad!! Oh wait -- Cuervo's under there playing Quilt Cop......Cuervo with the tequila gold colored eyes. Good thing I like him or those eyes would creep me out. So the next step was to prepare a backing. I'm trying to use stash, and I had a giant piece of incredibly ugly CW that I picked up for about a buck at some big sale --- good enough. I've already decided that this puppy won't ever leave my house and my name sure won't be on it so ugly CW will do just fine. After that I had to stop and smell the roses...........these came from my patio.

After that brief intermission, plus a quick lunch date with Hunny, I layered the thing up and spray basted it and spent a long long time patting and smoothing and finally had a flat, square sammich ready to quilt:

So now the 'Rebel Quilt' (gotta be, doncha think?) is under the needle and durned if it's still not done attacking. Now the thread is breaking every foot or so. And my free-hand straight lines are anything but, and my usually good stitches look like crap. Tonight I pick out the quilting on 2 blocks, and tomorrow it gets all quilted, even if it just ends up being nothing more than an all over design. Or maybe a Confererate flag in every block? LOL!!