Quilt-a-thon

For the past several weeks, I have been taking a beginning quilting class. I've always wanted to quilt, but inertia is really powerful, so I just wistfully looked at quilts and sighed.

Then, about three months ago, now, I mentioned that I was interested to a coworkers and she told me about a class and agreed to take it if I would take it, and voila. The nudge necessary for inertia to take hold.

The class itself has been interesting in that I met some nice women, got to hang out, and have generally had a good time. However, as I am a relatively handy person, the class moved painfully slowly. So I decided to embark on my own quilting escapades.

Since I like blogs, I immediately went out and found some great quilting blogs and read up on quilting and technique and fabric and came up with a couple of small projects to work on. I had really good excuses in that two good friends, Deb and Stephanie were both pregnant and well, wouldn't a baby quilt just make the best present for the new baby.

Now I had a mission.

Quilt One: strip quilting.

Cutting fabric is quite nerve wracking. It's permanent. It's decisive. And I was really worried. I took a nice short cut in buying a precut fabric set, called a honey bun. The strips are the width of the fabric (42-44 inches) and 1 1/2 inches long. Then they wrap it all up neatly and tie it with a ribbon.



The first thing I noticed when it arrived, though was the crazy amount of fabric lint involved. So I promptly took it apart and ran it through the dryer on air fluff.




So then I arranged them into sets of five that were complimentary.



And then stitched them together into 5 piece strips.



After I had them all stitched together, I cut them into squares and started alternating them vertically and horizontally and laid them out.





Then I started piecing the squares together.





I ended up going for five block long strips and seven strips. Here, I've got the first three strips stitched together and am still in the process of putting the other four strips together.



With my leftover little pieces from cutting the squares, I made long 1 1/2" strips of squares leftover to be used as a border. This isn't the best shot, since the top is done but then along the right and bottom are the border strips and on top of the top is the striped binding fabric.



I used some white cotton to provide some contrast and then did some simple machine quilting (which was the most nerve wracking part) and then bound it up and tossed it into the washer with some baby detergent.

And voila!









I had some leftover strips of 1 1/2 inch squares so I pieced a little bit on the back.

This was the second quilt to be finished despite the fact that it was the first quit top pieced, so it was folded up and labeled like this.







Quilt Two (technically one?)

For this quilt, I used what is known as a charm pack. It is a pack of precut 5-inch squares. This time I use a concept I had seen online and almost duplicated it to surprisingly acceptable effect. This quilt had machine quilting, a little free motion, and I even did some little curves. Very scary.

I didn't take progress shots on piecing this one, but here is the final product.





This was much smaller than the other quilt. I don't know how useful it will be as a quilt in the end. I really liked the little triangle prairie points around the edges. I may play with that idea some more. Maybe add a loop and other kid-friendly things.

Anyhow, this one ended up folded up and labeled, too.





While making those two adorable girl quilts, I used Drew for practice and made his Transformers quilt, which is nothing more than two large pieces of novelty Transformers fabrics (two different ones, actually), and sandwiching them with some batting and using it to practice machine quilting. It turned out poorly from my perspective but was good practice. Drew, of course, adores it and it is on his bed. In the end, I suppose it worked out well for all parties involved.

Current Work In Progress

Right now, I am working on a quilt for Drew, a quilt for a friend, and my quilt for my class. The one I'm making in class is not really to my liking. I made it with fabrics selected rather blindly without having a clue what I was doing.

Now, I'm diving off the deep end, reading books about quilt technique, color theory, etc. My next few quilts will play off color more as I'd like to try to do what I call an optical quilt. A quilt which uses a simple repetitive block, which uses color, more than the blocks for the dramatic effect. I know it will be challenging as it will take far more patience than the rest have required.

The quilt for a friend is using my first ever home-made bias tape for binding. (See, I'm throwing around terms for credibility!) I've never done much work with stuff cut on a bias (other than buying bias cut skirts and dresses), but after reading up on the benefits of bias tape instead of straight cut binding, I had to try it. I'll post how it goes. I expect the binding part to be easy. (Binding being the edge of the quilt.) The machine quilting should prove interesting, too, since that quilt is also my first go at using *gasp* colored thread for quilting.

Anyhow, I delayed and delayed putting these photos up because the two quilts were gifts. But both baby girls arrived safe and sound and received their quilts. (Despite a mailing mix up by yours truly, no less!)

Stay tuned for more quilting. It is my hobby du jour...maybe for the year or longer at the rate I'm going. I've decided that to get a more expensive sewing machine (and the one I want is like...4000% more expensive than the one I have), I need to exhaust my current machine and make the most of its limited abilities. Most of the features of the one I want are extras, nothing that can't functionally be achieved with my current machine. They just make things easier, nicer, and in the end, faster. But in the meantime, I'm appreciating my machine's cooperative nature.

My project this weekend is to some periodic maintenance. I'm pretty sure it should be oiled and blown out with compressed air. I'm going to take a deep breath and take it partially apart to do that. Hopefully it'll go back together and work afterwards!

I do have a little other hobby that I'm going to engage in soon for a little Christmas project which I expect to take FOREVER. But it will be worth it! That's all you'll get to hear about it, until December 26th, though, since the Christmas gift recipient is a blog reader. :) Too bad!