Hi! Sorry for the long delay between posts. Easter came and went. My husband and I went away for a weekend for the first time since I think we had kids. The sun came out and the garden needed tending. Laundry needed to be done since people like clean underwear. All the while whenever I had a free moment I was quilting, quilting, quilting.
To be perfectly honest, I'm at the tail end of my second trimester and I'm running around after two toddlers all day every day; by the time I'm ready to write, I'm tired. Mentally and physically tired. So this post might be heavy on pictures but light on words. Who knows?
I'm going to warn you now: if you are a quilting purist/expert/like things done a certain way, just scroll through, look at the pictures and don't read anything. I think I broke all the rules of quilting with this one. I don't feel so bad since that's how you learn and I was keeping this quilt for myself; if I was selling it, giving it away or making it for a special gift, that would be something completely different.
The origin of this quilt is about two years ago I took a quilting class at a quilt store that has since closed (sad). If memory serves me, the woman who taught the class actually put the quilt pattern together and just called it a sampler quilt since that's what it is. Easy. Simple. I like that. My thought at the time was, if I'm going to continue on this quilting habit/addiction, I should probably take a class and learn something from someone who has been doing this for a while. I did learn a lot and am very thankful I took the class and look forward to taking another one.
Here are some pictures I took and posted on my personal Facebook page when I was putting the individual quilt blocks together.
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| Martha Washington Star Variation |
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| Nine patch |
Not super aligned that nine patch.
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| Nine patch with border |
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| Ohio Star |
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| Log Cabin |
That log cabin should not have any tails on the ends; all the pieces should be lined up. I had some issues with my 1/4" foot. One issue, really. That issue being the guy who sold it to me at the sewing machine store did not know what he was talking about when he said it was a 1/4" foot.
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| Flying geese/windmill |
This block didn't make it into the final quilt. I can't remember why. I made another block instead, shown below. I still have this block somewhere and thought it would be nice to make into a pillow for the couch or just hang it up all on its own. But I can't seem to find it. Story of my life!
I wish I could find the instructions that were given to me for each block; I know they are somewhere in my sewing chaos but I can't seem to lay my hands on them. Some of these are beautiful and I would love to repeat them.
That's all of the pictures I took of each quilt block before I put the whole thing together two years ago. Then it stayed in my laundry basket of horrors until I chose it from the lottery.
Putting the three layers of quilt top, batting, and backing together was something of a nightmare. I emailed one of my previous bosses, Theresa, to help me figure out how to cut the backing fabric so I could sew it back together to create a big enough piece of material. Side note: Theresa makes quilts that are awesome. I can't even begin to describe them and she seems to do them so quickly, it's amazing! She has a fantastic talent! Also, she was one of the best people to work for when I was in college.
Anyway, the short story is, I cut the backing fabric incorrectly so then I had to add more fabric and ended up with two seams on the back. Then I didn't have a big enough piece of batting and I was NOT going to the fabric store, I was going to use what I had come hell or high water so I pieced together batting in order to make it big enough as well. That's how I roll, folks!
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| The final quilt |
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| You can see on the left the green flying geese that I used instead of the larger block above. |
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| Star and appliqued butterfly. There are two butterflies and I hand-stitched the blanket stitch around them. |
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| Can't remember the name of this block. If someone knows, please comment! |
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| Bow tie |
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| Basket |
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| Back of the quilt |
I love, LOVE the fabric I chose for the back of the quilt. I did stitch in the ditch for the quilting of the blocks. For the border I used a little something called Quilt on a Roll. I found it at
Quilting Made Easy. It WAS pretty easy. I did have a few issues with it and I can write about that in another post. I'm losing creative writing steam. :)
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| It looks nice with my blue couch,eh? |
So this quilt will stay as a nice lap quilt for my downstairs where it is almost always cool and a little cozy blanket is nice to have when watching a movie or TV.
I will be making a semi-big announcement in my next post. I'll give you a hint: it has to do with this:
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