WIP: Wooden Quilt

Sometimes a burst of energy is followed by a period of lull in sewing. My most pressing tasks to do next were to wash the completed Nautical Baby quilt (August 27, 2014 post) before gifting and to piece the backing for the Vintage Ornaments quilt now that I have gathered the side border fabrics (September 18, 2104 post). But neither of those happened this week. The only time I spent in my sewing room was doing clean up and scrap management after those two projects. Here are the HSTs I salvaged, pressed, and trimmed from the Nautical Baby quilt. I will make something out of them someday after they have "ripened" in my scrap stash for a while. My quilting time this week was spent elsewhere – in the creation of a wooden quilt.

We are putting down hardwood floors in the master bedroom and my husband, Frank,  wanted it to be a DIY project. He expended a large effort in locating the flooring (distressed hickory - same as in the hallway), purchasing a sufficient supply of the expendables (paper, staples, tape), and assembling the tools (Father's Day gift compressor, nail gun, staple gun, table saw). Although, interestingly enough, despite the extent of my husband's arsenal of tools, we discovered that my large rotary cutter was the best choice for slicing through the foam underlayment of the carpeting. You can see the big yellow Olfa cutter on my husband's surgical table of tools near the foreground of the following photo. I have donated it to the cause. Like formerly dedicated fabric scissors, it will not grace the walls of my sewing room again, even with a fresh blade.

The demo before hand (removing baseboard, carpet, and pad) was nothing to sneeze at but I was not doing the hard labor. I fetched and stuffed trash bags, provided drinks and food, and pointed out obscure, but potentially troublesome, remaining nails, staples, etc. My husband enlisted the help of a friend Al for the first part of the demo and most of the actual lay down so far. Granted, most of the time is spent down on their knees. But power tools? A loud thundering compressor? Male bonding? What guy would not jump at an opportunity like that?

There is not much glory in doing the demo but somebody's got to do it. The HGTV design shows make it look like fun. Not! This is the quilter's equivalent of picking out free motion quilting gone awry. It is time consuming and there is little to show for it. But Frank forged ahead. Note the drop cloth on the bed. It makes for a very dull, rumpled quilt.

I have been drawn in to this new flooring undertaking with the role as the official "placer of planks person" so that the hickory boards look balanced and random in color and pattern. Joint placement is important too, since each wooden "seam" must be staggered at least six inches from an adjacent one. My husband called these my quilting talents. That is why I am tongue-in-cheek claiming that we are making a wooden quilt! I have moved or repositioned these planks pretty much as I would quilt blocks on a design wall. The guys then pounded them in and stapled them down. The photo below shows the status of this week's Work In Progress.

Color selection is another quilter's skill. This week I picked paint color for the walls. The bright aqua there now is just a tinted primer. We will probably go with a softer blue with a bit of a violet undertone like one of these samples. We will start with the lower down, bolder, darker one, and paint the wall behind the bed. But my husband agrees that if I think it is too strong to paint all over, we can go paler on the remaining walls. I just want to assure myself that there is sufficient contrast with the pale furniture to avoid a washed out feeling.

Enough of this room. Even if I did not quilt this week, I am sure others did and I can share vicariously in their progress. Setting aside the wooden quilt work and color selection, I am now linking up to view other works in progress at this week's Freshly Pieced.