Quilts Do Not Finish Themselves!
- At September 03, 2014
- By Kelly
- In Quilts, Sewing For The Kids
- 4
Some time back, I posted about Jack’s (unfinished) quilt.
This project has been hanging over my head for years. It’s beyond ridiculous. I need it out of my sewing space and out of the space it has been occupying on my mental to-do list.
A week or so ago, I cut and pieced the back, which we have now decided is the front.
After all, no self-respecting third grade boy wants an i-spy quilt. (Actually, they do, they just do not want everyone else to know that they do. So, the i-spy side will hide on the back where only the 8 year old owner can see it and secretly spy matching squares.)
The steps are 6″x12″ finished size. I cut them using the 6.5″ strip cutter on my Accuquilt Studio and then just cut apart 12.5″ rectangles from the strip. Very efficient.
I used chalk to mark the lines for quilting.
Fortunately(?), I spent about 11 hours in the car when we went to my parents’ house for my dad’s birthday. This was plenty of time to hand sew the binding to finish it up. I am sooooo happy to be done with this one! Jack’s pretty happy, too.
And, in the spirit of embracing imperfection, I am even going to let you see the quilting up close. And then I will tell you what I learned.
This was quilted on my home sewing machine. It is a Bernina Virtuosa 155. In doing this, I pretty much quilted it in the worst possible direction. First, I quilted the straight line across the middle.
That would have been fine, except that I then stitched the one to the left.
And then I continued to the left until that whole side was done.
This meant when I got to that far left side, I had the whole quilt bunched up in the throat of my machine. Now, you may be thinking this does not matter, because after all, at some point I would have had it all bunched up there, right? But if I had been smarter and instead moved to the right first, when I did the left side and it was all bunched up, it also would have already been quilted, which would have made it much more stable and compressed over there. (ie, less bunchy and loose and more cooperative!)
So, it would have been better if I had done the right side first.
Lesson learned – think ahead about where the quilt will be with respect to the machine when quilting!
I also learned that it is much harder to keep my stitch length consistent on a big quilt than on a mini quilt. Guess I need more practice! I am okay with that.
Here it is hanging from his top bunk. Quilts are for fort making, you know. :)
All in all, I am happy with the result, and Jack is happy to have his own mom made quilt.
Happy Quilting!
Kelly