Quilting the Daisy Chain

Hi Friends!

Confession time: I have two, maybe weird but I think totally normal, habits.

The first is, if I really want to sew but there is something that is more important to get done (for example, taxes) I won't sew anything until I get the more important task done.

Second, if I do have a big task in front of me (like, say, quilting) I have a hard time doing it until I have wrapped my head around how I am going to get it done.

Both of those little quirks dominated this past week.

We were on Spring Break and I was pretty determined to get at least two things done (while our roof was being replaced): finish our taxes and quilt my Daisy Chain quilt.

The taxes got done without many problems (thank you, 2009 self, for keeping the closing documents from the house we bought-life was so much easier because of that!), and I wasn't going to start quilting until it got done. The only problem was I couldn't figure out the particulars about actually quilting my Daisy Chain.

For those of you who are non-quilters, all the work I have done up to this point has just been piecing all the fabric together into a pattern-this particular pattern is called Daisy Chain; the quilting part doesn't start until the quilt top is completed and it is layered with a bottom piece of fabric and batting in between the two. The quilting is the design that you sew to attach all three layers together and form a nice little quilt.

You can see all three layers here: the bottom layer of fabric (wrong side up), the batting, and the quilt top. 

Getting to the actual quilting part requires pinning all three layers together and, frankly, it's my least favorite step. I suppose if I was doing a small quilt it wouldn't be a big deal, but I have to lay everything down on my floor of my living room and get down on my hands and knees to pin the whole thing.

To be honest, I was putting off the pinning part; instead, I worked on my son's Christmas stocking for a few days. It was actually kind of nice to take a break from the sewing machine and focus on my first love, counted cross stitch.

Where I am at now.

Where I was the last time I wrote about the stocking.

But soon, I got back to the quilt. I decided to do a cross hatch design which is a pretty fancy way of saying I'm going to put diagonal lines all over it. It's taken me about three days to do the first half of all the diagonals which I think is pretty good time. I'm going to bury all my threads and then start on the second half of the quilting.

I decided to not quilt the crosses in the Daisy Chain, but I am thinking of doing a stitch-in-the-ditch (or "outlining" them) to make them pop. I'll see how it looks when I am done. 

Any questions you have about making a quilt?

Happy Sewing!

Kate