Anniversary gift

I really love quilts.  I think they are beautiful.  But I am not a quilter.

A very good friend got married last August.  The wedding was across the country and given the turmoil in our lives at the time, my husband and I weren't able to make it.  This particular friend really values handmade.  I knit him a beanie 11 years ago, which he wore constantly.  Then while he was living in Mauritania his house was broken into, and along with electronics, the thieves made off with the beanie.  (I admit to being a little bit flattered that they thought it was worth stealing).  My friend was bereft, so I knit him another one.

When he got married, of course I was going to make them something.  I haven't knit much at all lately, so I decided to make them a throw quilt.  It took me quite awhile to get started on this project - in fact, I'm just going to squeak in before their first anniversary.
 

I had this idea in my head of a simple patchwork of shot cottons.  So I bought half-yards of 15 colors (the fabric line is Artisan Cottons) and went to work.  I cut 35 squares 11"x9" (because that was what I got when I evenly divided my half-yards into square-ish blocks) and sewed them into five strips of seven blocks.

I just stitched-in-the-ditch (roughly; I'm really not good at it, I have found) to quilt it.  I used Warm and Natural quilt batting, which says you can quilt 10" apart - this was good because I didn't want to do more than that.  Like I said, I'm not a quilter.

I got some puckers where lines of quilting crossed previously stitched lines of quilting.  This has happened with all the quilts I have made and it's enough to make me not want to quilt anymore.  I know this one is not perfect, but I hope they will appreciate it.  And I'm not going to apologize for my lack of quilting prowess any more in this post.  Instead, I'm going to show you what I like about it.

I really love the combination of colors.  I played with a few arrangements and then ultimately ended up arranging the colors roughly by color families on the diagonal.

I took the opportunity of the quilt back to use up some of the quilting fabric cuts I had kicking around the stash.  I worried that it was a little too girly but I like the green, yellow and orange together.

I finished the binding by hand, and I love how neat it looks.  In my humble, non-quilter opinion, it is definitely worth the effort to hand-sew a quilt binding.  I thought after quilting that I should bind the quilt in black, but I didn't have any black cotton in my stash, and I didn't want to have to run out to Joann's, so I ended up using this medium-gray quilting cotton I had lying around.  In the end, I think it looks better than the black would have, especially against the back.

I love looking at different quadrants of this quilt and letting my eyes absorb how those colors look together.  There are so many different moods in these colors, depending on where you look.  Isn't the turquoise below gorgeous?  It is woven with peach threads to make the shot cotton effect.  The photo doesn't do it justice at all.  The red/purple above it is also so pretty.

I also really love this blue/green/yellow intersection.

The quilt finished at 52" by 60" square.  It felt so heavy to me while I was quilting it.  I couldn't understand why, after all, a 52x60" quilt didn't seem like it ought to be much bigger than the roughly 40" square baby quilts I made earlier this year.  But then I did the math, and yeah, it's nearly twice as big, area-wise.  I really can't imagine making a twin-sized quilt on my machine, let alone a queen-sized one.

I do, however, have enough of the shot cottons left over to make another quilt, and despite the fact that I am not a quilter, I kind of want to.  At least, I kind of want to make the top.  I just don't want to quilt the darn thing.

I know that I can send my quilts out to be quilted.  But I am stubborn and don't really see the point in starting the quilt process if I am not going to finish.  Alternatively, there is a local quilt shop nearby that sells time on its longarm machines.  I don't see myself doing that either.  So more than likely, I will probably give in to a quilting urge again in a few months and you'll see me back here with another imperfect, puckery project.

I am not a quilter.  But I sure love quilts.

First quilt

A good friend of mine is due any minute with her fifth child (and first boy!).



This happy turn of events coincided with a recent longing, quiet at first but growing persistently louder, to make a quilt.

I used this tutorial at Cluck Cluck Sew and fabrics from my stash for the quilt top and binding.



The piecing went relatively smoothly.  I read roughly a billion tutorials online about all aspects of making a quilt, and was feeling pretty confident when it was time to make my quilt sandwich.  So one night while J and I were watching TV, I taped the backing to the dining room floor, layered my batting and top, and stuck 90 pins into my 39"-ish square-ish quilt with what I thought was the greatest care.



When I started quilting, though, it was pucker city on my quilt top.  I kept going, thinking that the quilt would just look "organic." But with each new quilting line, the quilt appeared ever less "organic" and ever more "assembled by chimpanzee."



So I grumbled a little about how hard quilting is, but ultimately ripped out the stitches, pressed the heck out of the top and the backing, and started over.  This time I used twice as much duct tape to tape my backing to the dining room floor and took a lot more time smoothing the backing, the batting, and finally the quilt top.  Then I stuck 170-odd pins into the quilt.

And I guess you really need a mass quantity of pins to successfully pin a quilt because this time it was much better.  I quilted the vertical brown rails first, by stitching in the ditch.  Which, by the way, is really not so easy.  I've done a bit of stitching-in-the-ditch in garment sewing, but that's never more than a few inches at a time.  These long lines were a lot harder.  I kept popping out.

Then I quilted the horizontal seams on either side of the center rail, starting from the inside of the quilt and sewing out to the edges.  That worked well.  At the end I did the horizontal quilting lines on the "flipped" portion of the quilt, between the rails.  In retrospect, I probably should have started quilting those lines from the middle of the flipped portion, and then moving up or down.  Instead I started at one end and you can kind of see how the strips got distorted towards the purple and brown end.

The backing is a white with black crosshatch quilting cotton I got at Joann's.  I should have taken a close-up of the fabric, but I think it's a perfect contrast to the print-crazy quilt top.

I hand-stitched the binding to the back of the quilt in front of the TV over an evening and an afternoon.  Just like with my second quilt, I found that process immensely satisfying.  Up until that point, I don't think I quite believed that I was really going to end up with a quilt.

I am pretty happy with the finished product, but I wish I had used flannel or something thinner for the inner layer.  I used some Warm and Natural cotton/poly blend batting that I had in the stash and it seems a little thick for this size quilt.  A thinner quilt would drape a bit better and be easier to wrap an actual baby in.

But I think it will make a nice play mat.

Quilty Aspirations

I often drool over photos of gorgeous quilts online, though I myself have never been very good at putting fabrics together. I made this quilted table runner with matching napkins three years ago, but I drew all my fabrics from the same collection (Valori Wells Karavan), figuring that would be foolproof.

Then last week I read a great post at Stitched In Color where Rachel took her readers through her fabric selection process, step-by-step.  It was fascinating.  I realized that, while I very well just may not have a knack for pairing fabrics, I definitely do not spend enough time on it.

We are on vacation right now, and today the stars aligned.  Rachel announced a fabric mosaic contest, and I was stuck inside with a napping infant and a sick toddler while my girls were down on the beach with family.  I spent about 90 minutes making two mosaics.  The theme is "almost primary, as in primary colors."  I spent the bulk of my time on the second mosaic, and I really love how that one turned out.  So much so, that I am seriously considering trying to turn it into a quilt.

For the first one, I focused more on colors than on prints. I ended up with more of a rainbow effect than a primary colored one.  I like it, but looking at it compared to the second one now, it definitely looks a bit more krafty than I think I actually like.

This is the one I spent most of my time on.  I had it in my head that I should avoid using multiple color ways of the same print - and yet, as you can see, I did it twice! Turns out I really love the Alison Glass Handcrafted line - I could not leave out any of the pluses or the flying geese.  I particularly love the chartreuse pluses in the bottom left hand corner and the storm geese in the top center.

The contest is open through August 18, and winners will be chosen by popular vote! Go make your own mosaic or just check out the beautiful mosaics people have put together. And if you like mine, they are #24 and #25 in the linkup ;)