Evening Up

I've made slow, almost undetectable progress on the Deconstructed Coins quilt this week--but it is progress, and it took a surprising amount of time. I finished the fifth--and last--row of coins. Then I measured to see how the lengths of the rows compared to each other. They ranged from 51 3/4 to 55 inches. This was pretty good, considering that I did not measure the rows as I sewed them together. The little coin blocks varied in width, and my only rule when sewing them together was to use 19 per row to use up as many as I could of the 96 available coins. I had one skinny coin leftover, so I sewed it to the shortest row, bringing that one up to 53 3/4 inches. Since that was the last of my coins, I added some solid scraps (plus navy edging) to three of the rows and trimmed the longest row back to make them all 54 3/4 inches. 

An added solid is on the left.

The other thing I did was even up the edges of the rows by trimming back the navy pieces. (If you saw my last post about this quilt, you'll see how uneven they were.) That took a long time. I marked the approximate mid-point of each coin from top to bottom, then figured out the narrowest width I could use that would work for all of the rows: 7 inches. So I marked a chalk line 3 1/2 inches in each direction from the midpoint before trimming. Marking before cutting seemed less risky than just eyeballing and cutting. I had to unsew one tiny bit of navy and attach a new piece to make it the right width, but I was pretty pleased that it all worked out.

Here's a portion of a trimmed row.

And here they all are together. The edges are straighter than they look with the rows slapped up and spilling off the wobbly design wall curtain.

I'm a tiny bit bothered by the more regular right edge of the rows, with their even solid strips. The left side has a mix of solids and prints. I have some ideas for changing things up a bit, but I'm going to let it all be for now and see how things look after I figure out the sashing rows. 

I'm really glad I slowed down on this project. Now that I've relaxed about it, I'm having more fun. 

I'm linking up today with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social. Have a great quilty week, quick progress or slow. It's all fun.