Category Archives: Quilting

I really like sewing on rainy days. For me, it’s the perfect setting for catching up on hand sewing projects or getting new ideas started. Luckily, I’ve had no shortage of either over the past couple of days.

It’s getting close to craft show season, so I’m starting to work on getting a stock of things made to tote around the state with me later this summer. Yesterday I finished assembling five lunchboxes, and now they need several hours of hand sewing to finish off the binding on the sides. It’s a little mindless, but perfect for rainy days while Netflixing TV shows on the laptop. Perfect.

Also on the rainy day agenda: scrap sorting and cutting. (That’s Audrey “helping.” I should add that I use the term “helping” very loosely.) Today was all about 2 inch squares. I spent all afternoon and evening cutting, and it took forever to feel like I had enough. I’m still not sure I do.

I think they’re going to become a nine patch quilt–something I’m really excited about. I was pumped to finish my little quilt last week, so I hope this is something that will go equally as well. We’ll see tomorrow once I get started sewing!

I’m not the type of quilter to make a quilt from start to finish in days. I take weeks, months, and fairly often years, to go through all steps of making a quilt. Even the ones that shouldn’t take that long often do.

I am a changed quilter. Let me show you what’s happened since Friday:

Look at that! Everything but the binding is finished! And in like 5 days! I still can’t even believe it’s possible. I don’t think I actually did it. My dream of having elves work for me at night must be happening. Thank you, elves.

When I started it, I was hoping that I’d have enough to make something at least lap size, but I quickly realized that I was going to run out of a lot of the important scraps that I was using. I thought about axing the project or finding a new use for the blocks, but I ended up finishing the top off anyway. I really loved these blocks too much to give it up. Then, last night I found that I had a perfect fabric for the back, so I made the quilt sandwich and today I quilted it. I love it so much.

And even though I don’t know what to do with it now (there are no babies here) I want to make more of them. It was a fantastic project to work on for a few days, and I did enjoy the machine quilting. It’s been way too hot to do much hand quilting, and this gave me the chance to finish a project without too much commitment or sweat. I’m considering listing it in my Etsy shop, but I’m not sure if anyone buys baby quilts. Ideas?

Time to check another quilt off the to-do list. Bright Squares is officially finished, and I’m pleased. I don’t even regret at all ripping out the machine quilting on this and re-quilting it by hand. It looks leaps and bounds better than it did before. By huge bounds.

I feel like it’s pretty lousy that it’s taken me over five years to finish such a very simple quilt. I think I’m redeeming myself though, that in the past few months, I haven’t started any new projects. I’m really committing myself to finishing the projects that I’ve loved…and then left…and love once again.

So, yay!! for finishing projects!

I figured it was finally time to update my neglected little blog…unfortunately having mono has really wiped me out over the past few weeks. I’ve been working on things here and there, but my mostly singular project (outside of going to work) has been sleep. Lots and lots of it.

One of the few things I have done has been to finish the quilting and to start sewing on the binding of my Bright Squares quilt. It’s going slowly, but since it’s pretty small, I’m hoping I can have it finished in the next few days. We’ll see.

I’ll be back….after I take another nap.

Thanks to having a week off from work last week, I am nearly done with the hand quilting on my Bright Squares quilt. Just four more blocks, plus the binding (my least favorite) to go. I’m still pleased with my choice to rip out the machine quilting–just for the fact that the quilt lays flat when it’s spread out on the floor. It seemed crazy at first to do it, but I’m glad that I made the decision.

And thinking about hand quilting, I wondered if I were to put together a hand quilting tutorial, would anyone be interested in it? It seems that many more people machine quilt (which yes, I would like a good tutorial, thank you very much) their projects, and maybe it’s just because they’re afraid to try hand quilting. Interested? Let me know. I’m thinking it might be fun!

Seeing as though I’m still riding high on the feelings of having finished a big project, all I can think about now is keeping my momentum going and finishing more quilts. In fact, I had one in mind that I had started last year and thought would a make for a quick finish.

Then I stepped into my crazypants and made a simple project into a much, much bigger one.

I had started machine quilting this last year, and when started working on it again, I just felt like it was so lousy compared to what I had just finished doing. My stitches were uneven, the tension was terrible, and I just felt like I had to start over.

Hello, seam ripper. You are the one tool that I both loathe and love at the same time.

I guess it makes sense to hand quilt this, especially since it’s the last top that I pieced by hand. Back when I first started quilting, I didn’t have a sewing machine, so I learned to piece by hand. Now though, I don’t spend the time hand piecing because I don’t really feel like it adds that much to the finished quality of the quilt. Sure, I’ve spent an extra 10,000 hours on it while I sew everything together, but you can’t really see it once it’s all finished. I’d rather use my machine to piece (which is often more precise than I could do by hand) and spend the time to hand quilt.

I’m happy with how my quilting is starting to look now, especially compared to the way it looked with all those mistakes. I don’t think the mistakes were terrible, but I just felt that it was a waste of my time to finish something that I thought was so shoddy. All that time it’s taken me to make this, I’d just be so upset to think that it could have turned out so much better.

The only thing that really disappoints me about ripping all of this out is that I feel like I really failed at machine quilting. I know it’s my first real attempt, but even after some practice, I just felt that I couldn’t get the hang of it. Before I make another serious attempt, however, I’d like to take a class so that someone can actually show me what I need to do!

After a tense trip through the wash last night, The Quilt is complete! I could not be any happier with it.

I ended up picking a solid turquoise Kona cotton for my binding, to match the turquoise print that I used for the lines between the beads. It’s so simple, but it does a nice job of making the lower half of the quilt not feel so boring in all of it’s off-white-ness. At first, I wished that I had more of the print to use for the binding, but it’s been years long gone. Once I found the close match in the Kona, it seemed like an obvious choice to go with a solid. I’m very pleased with it.

I’m also really pleased with how the quilting in the circles came out after the wash and dry. I was nervous that since I used such tight quilting lines that there was the possibility that I’d get some nasty puckering. I got lucky though, and the circles look fantastic both on the front and back of the quilt. I also love how it feels–the mass of quilting makes this so much more tactile than anything I’ve done before.

Last night’s washing wasn’t without a little drama though. I added a smidge of Downy to the wash to soften things up, but after it finished drying, I realized there were about a half a dozen little Downy stains all over the bottom of it. I scrubbed the spots with some detergent and sent it right back through the wash. So far, all the spots seem to have faded, but it’s certainly not the first thing you want to find on your finished project.

I am so happy to have this completed. It’s renewed an interest in finishing quilting projects that I’ve had sitting, waiting for me for several years. The time I spent hand quilting were relaxing and enjoyable again. To be this excited about finishing this project and moving on to more is well worth the time it took to finish this.

Fin!