The Trip is Finished!

Well, here it is, finished at last:  my Around the World Quilt.  The final step was the binding, and I had some trouble with it.  I trimmed the backing and batting to 1/2 in. bigger than the quilt top, and I usually do a quarter inch.  I recommend the quarter inch.  I had backing fabric and batting folded over and sticking out of the binding on the back side of the quilt.  I had to redo a number of sections.  But it was worth it, because it is finished and it is beautiful!  Now, who should I give it to???

Quilting in progress

I have been working on quilting the Around the World Quilt.  This is done via free-motion quilting on my sewing machine, not on a long-arm machine.  I do it myself.  I always have trouble deciding how to quilt the quilts, but this one just seemed to naturally call for circles.  My brain saw circles right away, and since it's "A-Round" the World quilt, it's a perfect fit!  It's really easy to do, too, although some of my circles are a little wobbly.  I'm getting better at this free motion stuff, and not so leary of it either.  I have learned that a little faster is better than little slower.  Going to slow gives me too big of stitches.  I am finding a very comfortable speed for my movements with the quilt.  Practice makes perfect!   (If you click on the pictures, you can see a enlarged photo of it.)

Front

Back

Rip and Flip

I should have named this Blog "Vicki's Quilting MISTAKES!"  Sigh.  My Around the World quilt was looking beautiful, and I was all set to back it and bind it.  One final check before I started revealed a startling truth!  Some of the white squares were sewn in upside down!  16 to be exact.  Ohhhh I was heartsick!  So much work had to be redone.

It wasn't very noticeable, but I knew it and had to fix it.  My seam ripper got a good workout, and each upside down square was carefully ripped out and flipped over.  Ironed and re-sewn.  I was worry that now the edges would be stretched, or the corners wouldn't match, but that was all for naught.  It looked perfect again after it was fixed, but it was VERY time consuming

I hope people who read this will learn from my mistakes and save themselves some trouble.
Today's lesson:  Beware of fabrics where it is hard to tell the front from the back!   PAY ATTENTION!  My only consolation is that I discovered this error BEFORE I  bound and quilted the quilt!  Ripping seams is bad enough, but ripping out quilting, binding and then seams, unthinkable!

Perfect? NOT!

Well, LIVE AND LEARN!  My "perfect" backing for the Dinos on Parade quilt has some real logistic problems.  First off, I bought just enough fabric to back the quilt.  ALWAYS BUY EXTRA!!  I measured the quilt (measure twice, cut once, ok. I did that.)  I cut the fabric into 2 halves, now sew them together, backing is done!  WRONG!!  What did I forget in that scenario????  MATCHING THE PATTERN!  The backing fabric has large dinosaurs.  When I cut the fabric, aligned the edges, ready to sew, I noticed the discrepancy.  OHHHH!  Yeah, it'll be WAY BETTER to match the pattern, it will be much less noticeable that the backing was pieced.  Ok, I matched the pattern, but there was about a 6 inch jog in the fabric now, and since I had bought JUST ENOUGH, that 6 in jog at the top and bottom made the backing too short.  Six lousy inches too short! Booo hooo hooo!

  

Still plenty of width though, so I tried putting the quilt on sideways with the seam running horizontal instead of vertical.  IT FIT!!  with about an inch to spare at the top and bottom.   Whew!  BUT....  Geez,  The dinosaur pattern has one dinosaur that only faces one way. (It's the T-Rex, too.  We can't have the T-Rex laying on it's back, can we?!!)  All the others have some facing up, or down, or left, or right, so they could be oriented in either way.  But the T-Rex should be oriented only in one direction, or he would appear sideways on the backing.  What to do????  Here are my choices:

1. Give up.  (no)
2. Buy more fabric!  (no.)
3. Don't match the backing (no)
4. Fussy cut dinosaurs squares from the excess on the sides to match the pattern on the bottom and sew them on.  (Possibile, but I think that would look tacky.)
5. Put the quilt top on with the horizontal seam and hope no one notices the sideways dinosaurs. Would a kid notice? Probably not.  It's the BACK of the quilt, after all.  (Possible)
6. Cut the backing into large asymmetrical sections and join them again with strips of leftover fabric from the quilt front. (hmmmm....!) (no.)
7. Who says the quilt has to run with the grain of the fabric?   What if you "cocked" the quilt top on the background?  Wouldn't it look the the T-rex was just "leaning"?  Hard to envision this... (especially in the picture below, the quilt top should be at the other end...)  (well, no.  The seam would run at a diagonal and look goofy on the back.)

Another problem here is I don't know how to join the two pieces of fabric so that the seam from the back exactly attaches the pieces of dinosaurs.  I could match them up and TOPSTITCH them together, but then I'd have a line of thread running right down the middle of the dinosaurs.  The purpose of matching the pattern is to make is LESS noticeable.  So here's how I finally did it:

I over lapped the pieces, aligning the matching design.  Then I pressed about a 1/2 inch seam allowance under  on the top piece of fabric, and rematched the design. I pinned as close to the seam edge as possible.  I flipped the fabric over, and found that seam allowance underneath, and now pinned that down too.  Going back to the front, I removed the first set of pins which were very close to the seam.  Now I found the pinned seam allowance underneath again, and found the crease of that seam allowance.  I sewed right in the crease.  The larger seam allowance allowed me to sew right past the pins.  It wasn't perfect, but still not that noticeable in the long run.

I have decided to go with choice #5.  Sew it on sideways and who cares if the T-Rexes are sideways.  My guess is that few people will notice.  If you flip a corner over to look at the back, the T-Rex would be standing upright! 

 Let's get it done!

Deer Quilt

The Deer Quilt is a kit that I bought.  All the fabric is flannel, so this quilt will be especially snuggily!  Kits are a really nice way to do a quilt, especially for a beginner.  All the fabric is included, along with directions.  This kit also included a center Panel, so it went together really fast.  The "Flying Geese" in the border are not real flying geese (3 triangles).  Instead, they are made of 2 sets of  half-square triangles which made it really easy.     All the pieces in this quilt are larger, also ideal for a beginner.  The trickiest part of this quilt was getting the pieced borders just right to fit around the panel.  Also sewing the Flying  Geese sections so the points just touch the seam.  A good learning experience!  This will be a great quilt to cuddle up with in front of the TV on a cold winter day.

Backing for Dinos on Parade

I found a really cool fabric for my Dinos on Parade Quilt.  I LOVE fabric stores!  So many choices, but sometimes you find what you want right away.  Its a navy blue background with orange/yellow, lime green/white, green/yellow, blue/light blue, aqua/light aqua dinosaurs on it.  Same colors as on the top!  Perfect!  Can't wait to put it together now!

              Front                                                                             Back

Around the World top is finished.

Well, I have finished the Around the World quilt top.  I need to get backing fabric yet. (YAY!!  A trip to the fabric store!)  I chose an orange stripe for the inner border because 3 of the fabrics I used have this exact shade of orange/peach in it.  I think it makes a nice frame.  I will be using the dark blue with the orange floral design as the binding fabric.  That'll also bring the orange out to the edges.  For a quilt I wasn't crazy about, it sure turned out nice.  This is the first quilt I have done that measured what the pattern said it would when it was finished!  My quarter inch seams must be right on target now!

Progress on Around the World

I have been working on the Around the World Quilt.  Ever since I put it out on the design board, and can see the larger picture, I got excited about it again.  Take a look!

Lots of horizontal strips to sew together.  I'm not sure how many rows I want to add, I am thinking I'd like the largest dark diamond to meet at the top and the bottom.  The limitation will be if I have enough of the lightest fabric.  It's not much that I have left.  I am also thinking I'd like it to be at least one or two squares wider.  Adding a strip to each side will be easy enough.  Again, will I have enough fabric?   The class I took had this listed as a "throw" and I have enough fabric for that.  But I like making larger quilts. These are 3 in. squares, finishing to 2-1/2 in.  So it's 62.5 inches wide so far.  Another strip on each side would make it 67.  A small border would add another 3 or 4 in.  So 70" x ? @ 80" ?  There sure is a lot of math and geometry to quilts, isn't there!  I'm a lot better at sewing than I am at math.

I'm excited to see how it turns out.  I have to decide on a backing fabric, and also on a binding fabric.  Decisions, decisions, decisions!

Around the World

I took a class at a Quilt Expo, and we began making an "Around the World" quilt.  I learned about "strip sets" and choosing fabrics.  I was in the midst of making a very exciting Sampler Quilt at the time, and not all that interested in this new quilt of small squares.  It was an interesting class, but afterwards, the quilt pieces went into a box and there they joined the Cowboy Quilt on the shelf for a year.  

Over the course of time, I learned about a "design board."  At first I didn't see the point.  Now I wouldn't want to be without it!  My design board is home made, cardboard from a new furnace box (ie--big cardboard!) and I draped it with old strips of unused batting material, leftover from previous projects.  I can lay out my quilt pieces on it, lay out the rows and/or blocks, rearrange blocks, step back and see the "Big Picture."  The fabric of the quilt squares stick to the batting material.  You don't have to pin it, so it is easy to rearrange.  Many people use flannel, and I have even heard of using old vinyl tablecloths with flannel backing.  But I used batting strips, which would have been thrown out otherwise, and they work just fine.

I recently laid out the pieces of the Around the World Quilt that I had thought was "dull."  I wanted to take a picture of it for this blog.   Before, I could only see small strips of squares.  Laid out on the design board, I can see the pattern coming together.  SURPRISE!!  NOW I can see the big picture of this quilt, and I thought, "WOW!  That is really pretty!"  I have a new motivation to finish it now! 

Linda's Red Sampler Quilt

While the Cowboy Quilt was on the shelf, I needed a project to work on that I could actually quilt when finished.  By now, I have been doing quite a bit of reading on the web, watching You-Tube videos, buying books.  I stumbled upon the "Quilt-as-you-go" technique.  I bought a book called "The Essential Sampler Quilt Book" by Lynne Edwards, and I carried this book with me everywhere.  It is well-worn, read and re-read.  I love this book, and would highly recommend it.

I decided to make a Sampler Quilt with this book as my guide, quilting each block as you go along, and sewing them together at the end.  The hard part was deciding which blocks to do.  I ruled some out right away, they were "Way too hard!"  I started with the 3-rail fence block since I already had done that one.  It was such a delight to be able to quilt a 12" block, especially after my struggle with the monster Cowboy Quilt.  I loved doing these blocks.  I gained skills and confidence with each one I did.  As I approached the end of the quilt, even the "way too hard" blocks now seemed possible to me, and I was successful in making them too.

One main problem was that I ran out of my red fabric for the sashing strips and borders.  I should have paid attention to that old adage, "Measure twice, cut once."  But again, live and learn.  I was left with a lot of smaller pieces, and so I improvised, adding a small 4-patch piece between red strips, making a double border of them.

This quilt was given to my friend Linda, for her birthday.  Linda loves red, and this was my motivation for the color and fabric choices.  She LOVED the quilt.  (So did I -- it was hard to part with this one!)

The Cowboy Quilt

The Cowboy Quilt is a "Whack and Stack" quilt.  I saw a picture on the web, and the gal said it was her very first quilt, and so I knew I could do that too.  I read her directions and THOUGHT I knew what she meant.  However, I did not understand what a "repeat" of a fabric was, and I needed 8 repeats per pinwheel.  I went fabric shopping, looking for something that had a "repeat."  I knew that I needed to stack 8 of the "repeats" in a pile, and then cut the triangles.  I'm thinking "fussy cuts" even though, at the time, I didn't know that term.  Anyway, I found some cowboy fabric, and yes! it had repeating pictures, so I thought this would be perfect.  Here is the fabric:

I proceeded to cut out the fabric, and oh!  so much fabric was wasted.  I would cut out 8 boots, or 8 sheriff badges.  I didn't understand that you just layer the fabric, mark and pin like elements, and cut a ROW of fabric, and make triangles from that row, irregardless of what was pictured on that triangle.  (I learned this lesson later, thanks to You-Tube.)  I also was not able to cut through 8 layers of fabric, so I ended up actually fussy-cutting all my pieces, one at a time.  Very time-consuming but I was new at this, and excited by the process and the results.  After you had the 8 triangles cut out, you arranged them points together, and it made a kaleidoscopic.pinwheel.  They were BEAUTIFUL!!  Each one was a surprise, and I was thrilled!  I made some of my pinwheels go clockwise, and some counterclockwise.  In retrospect, I wish I had made them all going the same direction, but again, live and learn.  I wanted this quilt for my husband and we have a California KING waterbed, so it was quite a humongous project.  It took a long time to piece the top.  The finished top was 90" x 90". But then came MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

Quilting a king size quilt with a little sewing  machine is not do-able.  I ripped out and ripped out and tried again and again. There was just too much material to fit in the throat of the sewing machine, and too much bulk to maneuver through that little space.  I finally gave up, and the cowboy quilt was put on a shelf for over a year.  Then my sweet husband bought me a new sewing machine for my birthday.  Another Brother, but top-of-the-line.  (What a sweetheart!)  It was designed for quilters, and had a much larger throat.  I was able to finish the cowboy quilt, and even with all it's flaws, I love it.  Another quilter gave me this very helpful advice, and I rely on it to this very day:  "If a man on a galloping horse goes by and doesn't notice the mistakes in the quilt, it's not significant enough to worry about."  What good advice!

Three Rail Fence Quilt

This three-rail fence quilt was my very first attempt at quilting.  It is a good "beginner's" quilt, short straight seams, not too many blocks.  I was so green, I did not have any of the usual quilting tools except pins and a scissors!  All the fabric was cut by hand using a tape measure and a scissors. I didn't know rotary cutters and mats even existed!  I sewed it on a small Brother sewing machine, the $89 version from Walmart.  Nothing fancy.

I do have experience in sewing, I have made many skirts, jackets, blouses, dresses, etc.  I thought quilting would be a cinch!   OH OH OH!  Did I have a lot to learn!!  In sewing, the standard seam allowance is 5/8 inch.  In quilting, it's a quarter inch.  "Close enough," I thought.  WRONG!  I learned the hard way, and luckily, in my sewing box, I found a seam ripper.  For me, one of the hardest lessons to learn was sewing a quarter inch seam.  Quilts really do need to be exact.  But I persisted, and the quilt top came together, measuring about 36 x 40.  Yes, it was small.  

Now to "quilt" it!  How to do that!?, I wondered. First I had to make the "sandwich," which wasn't too hard since this was a small project.  I stitched in the ditch along both sides of the yellow strips, and the square in their centers.  A nice safe way to quilt. But I was immensely proud of myself when I finished.  And so began an exciting new hobby.  A Quilter was born!

My very first quilt was lovingly given to my daughter for a changing blanket for my grandson.  

12 Quilts Revisited

Hello and Welcome!  The purpose of this blog is to share and keep track of my projects, both as works-in-progress and as finished quilts.  I will try to re-establish my "timeline" of quilts, from the first one to the present.

I have done/worked on 12 quilts so far, in approximately 2 years time.  Not all are finished, of course, and some have been put on hold while I delighted in something else that grabbed my imagination.  So many beautiful fabrics, so little time! Here are my quilts in the approximate order that I STARTED them.  I will be going into more detail on each as time allows.

1. Three Rail Fence quilt.  (Finished, given to Dianne.  This is a small baby-sized quilt.)

2.  Cowboy Quilt  (Finished. KING sized, on my bed.  Oh my, what a learning experience this was!)

3  Linda's Red Sampler Quilt  (Finished.  Queen sized, given to Linda)

4.  Around the World Quilt  (Finished,  68" x 68")

5.  Deer Quilt  (Not finished, quilt top is done, needs to be sandwiched and quilted)

6.  Alayna's Quilt  (Finished, twin sized, given to Alayna)

  

7.  "X" Marks the Spot Quilt  (Not finished, quilt top is done, needs to be sandwiched and quilted)

8.  Kaylyn's Kaleidoscope Quilt (Finished, twin sized, will give to Kaylyn for her birthday in Sept. 2012)

9.  Blue Star Quilt  (Finished, queen-sized, given to Jeff)

10.  Snowball Quilt  (Finished, crib-sized, given as a baby gift to my neighbor)

11.  Dinos on Parade Quilt  (Finished)

12.  Mya's Pink String Quilt (Finished, 76 x 90, given to Mya.)

I'm LOVING Retirement!