Quilting the quilt

How I spent my holidays

It's been a little over a year since I started on the Great Quilting Experiment.  I started off in November of 2012 with an idea to create a quilt and managed to feel pretty good about my very first completed block.

my first block

Not long after my first block, my trusty little beginner's Singer died a grindy, noisy death and I started looking around for a replacement.  I dropped into a sewing/craft store around the corner, KW Sewing Machines, and had a great chat with one of the saleswomen there.  I told her my level of experience, and where I wanted to go with my sewing and she introduced me to one of the coolest pieces of technology I've ever been fortunate enough to meet - the Janome 2030 QC.

It has a computer inside!

For those of you who don't know, I get a little geeky about technology so needless to say I was very impressed with the capabilities of this little beast. The hands-on creative addict in me loved everything about this machine (to name a few features: it threads its own needles, ties its own knots, and has a sweet no-pedal option for perfect speed sewing), and with a lot of work I managed to secure this beautiful piece of work by January of 2013 so that I could continue my sewing adventures.

By March of that year I'd completed about half of the 30 blocks needed for my king-size quilt (what was I thinking for my first quilt?!).  I put together a quick little photo tutorial for the custom Sarah's Choice quilt blocks I was making so that I could share the cool stuff I'd been working on.

taking a break to share my process

I worked on my quilt off and on for the next several months, and by October 2013 I'd finished all the blocks I'd needed.  I made 36 but decided to only use 30 of the 12" blocks because I'd neglected to account for the sashing and cornerstones when doing the math for a standard king size blanket.

all the blocks finished with sashing and cornerstones

Once I had the front finished, I took a break for a few months to bide my time till Boxing Day after Christmas so that I could get the batting and backing I needed to finish the quilt.  Sure enough, there were sales all over the place and I managed to pick up 3 meters of Warm and Natural cotton batting and 3 meters of wide fabric for my backing.  As soon as I had all my supplies, I immediately got to work.

safety pins are cool and all, but this stuff is a lifesaver!

I read a tip online that the easiest, quickest way to secure the layers of a quilt was a good temporary adhesive crafting spray.  They don't gum up needles and the spray itself washes out in a normal wash cycle once your project is finished.

for working with large projects, these are a MUST HAVE

Once the quilt layers were secured and I started actually quilting this huge thing (again: what was I thinking!?), I started to get very sore shoulders and realized I needed a better way to handle all the material. 

I ran out of thread pretty quickly at this stage (I only had two spools of 250 yards), so when I ran to the fabric store to get 3 more spools (which still might not be enough - I must be out of my mind), I spotted these spiffy Fons & Porter Machine Quilting Gloves designed to grip fabric easier and to reduce tension in the neck and hands when sewing.  They look cheesy, but they're fantastic - I highly recommend getting some of these if you do a lot of machine quilting.

showing some love for the walking foot

All in all, I'm very pleased with how the quilt is coming along and I can hardly believe it's been such a long work in progress.  It's been a very lovely holiday this Winter working on this final stage of the project.

coffee, quilting and Netflix - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to me!

What I have left will probably take some time to wrap up, and then I get to try my hand at binding this bad boy.  Stay tuned for updates as I move into the next phase (and I continue to question my sanity).

Quilting Progress

After 8 long months, I'm happy to announce that I've finished the front of my quilt!  It is a king size quilt (approx 93" x 112"), and consists of 30 13.25"* blocks with cornerstones (2" square*) and sashing (2" x 13.25"*).

Once I had the blocks all finished, I laid them out on the living room floor to make sure the two styles of blocks I'd done (squares and pinwheels) alternated properly.

Once I had the order of the blocks ready, I then sewed the blocks into rows with the sashing between the blocks, and sewed the sashing and cornerstones into rows.  Below is what the square rows looked like (I don't have a photo of the sashing and cornerstone rows.

This is the method illustrated below:

And, viola! As shown above, here's the finished front part of the quilt!

*finished dimensions - I use quarter inch seam allowances

Sarah's Choice quilt block

Quilt Block Pattern: Sarah's Choice
Approximate Finished Quilt Size: King Size (100" x 100")
Blocks: 14" x 14" (x36)
Fabric Yardage: 

• Dark Brown: 2 yards (1.8288 meters rounded up to 2 meters)
• Blue: 2 yards (1.8288 meters rounded up to 2 meters)
• Cream: 4.5 yards (4.1148 meters rounded up to 5 meters)

two each per block (x36)

four each per block (x36)

four per block (x36)

four per block (x36)

Gather the two 4 1/4" dark brown squares and the two blue squares of the same size. Use the sandwich method to sew a dark brown square to a blue square. Cut them apart to create two half-square triangle units. Press flat, with seam allowance in the favor of the blue half. Repeat to create four units.

Gather four 4 x 7" cream rectangles, two 4 x 4" dark brown squares and two 4 x 4" blue squares. Use the quick flying geese method to create four flying geese for the outer rows of your quilt block. Take care to orient the squares as shown to end up with a unit with a dark triangle on one end and a blue triangle on the other.

Arrange the pieced units and four background squares into three rows - as shown in the example illustration below. You can get creative here with how your pieces are arranged. Sew components of each row together. Press seam allowances in top and bottom rows towards the corner squares. Press seam allowances in the middle row towards the center unit.  Create thirty six blocks.

Quilt Project - installment 1

I decided this week to start a new project - a full-size quilt!  I'm doing a Sarah's Choice pattern, and I'll be using a series of installments to track my progress through this quilting journey.

I have to do 16 12" blocks for the size quilt that I'm making.  Then I'll be doing the sashing and border once the blocks are finished.

My goal is to get at least one block done every week.  If I get time, and I have the daylight on my side I'm hoping I can do more (I have terrible lighting in my apartment and the only time I can really get good light is when I'm home during the day on the weekends - since it's been getting dark around 4-5pm lately).

So enough of the boring details, here's the first sewn pieces: sandwich style squares

And some flying geese style rectangles

And tadaa!! My first block!

 

It's a lot trickier than I realized to get all the corners to line up perfectly, but hey it's only my first block so far :)

Stay tuned for further installments!

My first quilt!

So today I finished my first quilt for some friends of mine who are having a baby soon.  It is a rag quilt, because I figured it'd be a nice intro to quilting where I didn't have to attempt hand-stitching, haha.  It's my first attempt ever - so be kind!

ruler, self-healing mat, rotary cutter, and some spring-scissors

polyester quilt batting

Here are the squares I cut of the fabrics I chose.  I picked a nice, soft flannelette in 5 different patterns.

I sewed the squares, with squares of batting sandwiched in between.  Then I sewed the squares together into strips.

strips of the squares

strips sewn together

back of the rag quilt

Here's the quilt all sewn together, from the back!  If you look closely you can see that I snipped the edges of the seams about every inch or so.  All of the seams you saw sewn 'upward' were similarly snipped.  You'll see why in the next picture!

And the finished product!  As you can see, once the quilt is then washed and dried (cleaning the lint trap a LOT), the seams curl around and get all soft and cute and stuff (everybody awwww!)

Can't wait for the baby shower next weekend to present it to the parents-to-be!