Make a quilt

I finished the marquee quilt top on Sunday while hubby was camped out infront of the ProBowl. I still have to choose backing fabric, have it quilted and sew on the binding before it will be completely finished, but I can sigh a big breath that the hard part is over (I’m already itching to start another quilt…!).

This time I’m making the Marquee quilt from “The Modern Quilt Workshop” book. I still have yards and yards of green strips to sew together, but yesterday I took a breather from that and made a sample block. It turned out nicely! I like the dark red and green together.

I got the quilt top finished yesterday. It looks almost just like the EQ6 drawing so I’m pleased. The backing fabric should arrive soon, and then I’ll be able to take it to the quilter’s for quilting.

Yesterday, I started sewing on the quilt blocks. I have 16 of one color finished and 6 of the other color. They’re easy to chain piece so I’m moving along quickly on these. I hope to get 20 of each color done by this afternoon.

I made test blocks with the fabrics I bought, and I didn’t like how they looked. So… I had to go fabric shopping again, but this time I think I’ve got it right. I made the test blocks yesterday, and I think they look great. I want to make one more set of blocks with the colors flipped and see how they look that way. Then I can start cutting up the fabric.

Maybe I can get all the fabric cut tomorrow, and I’ll be ready to sew by the weekend.

This quilt is for my mom’s birthday. It’s called Lucky Stars. It has over 30 fabrics in it, and it took me over 3 months to make. I sent it out to be quilted, and got it back last week. I’ve been hand sewing the binding on for what seems like ages. I sat through “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Ocean’s 13” while I finished up yesterday.

I’ve been calling it the “giganti-quilt” because it turned out much bigger than I realized it would be (90×105).

Mom’s quilt is back from the quilter’s, and it looks fabulous! I made the binding over the last couple of days and got it sewn on last night – up to the point of joining the ends, and I can NEVER do that without having to pick out stitches several times. I gave up last night and didn’t finish until this morning. So, today, I started HAND SEWING the stinking binding on. I absolutely HATE this part, but I’ve tried sewing the binding on other quilts by machine, and it looks like shit when I do. Her quilt is too special for me to be messing around with the binding. So, I’m going to struggle through hand sewing it on. Ugh! At least I got one side finished today -not sure if it was a long side or a short side (the quilt is 90×105), but it’s done! Only 3 more sides to go!

Maybe I’ll have this thing done by Christmas after all…?

I finally sat down to play with EQ6, and designed my next quilt to make. I’m doing it in blues for my husband. I think he’ll like it. I’ve already purchased the fabric, washed it, and started ironing, but I ran out of starch so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to finish up. Then I’m ready to cut (which I’ll do on the laser to save time).

UPDATE I bought the starch, but I haven’t taken the time to iron the fabrics because I’ve been too lazy. I’m planning on working on this quilt over Thanksgiving holiday while hubby is watching the ballgames. I can’t wait to see how this one comes together.

After a month, the backing fabric finally arrived. I’ve never worked with such big pieces of fabric before so I was scared to death to cut it up! Thankfully we still don’t have living room furniture so I was able to spread out to measure.

Now I just have to iron the pieces, sew them together along the selvege (sp?), trim off the selvege pieces and turn everything in to be quilted.

This damn quilt is so huge, I sure hope the quilt frame can accomodate it. Wouldn’t that suck if it couldn’t! Egads! Then what would I do? I’m NOT quilting it by hand, and I have no idea how in the world I could finagle it under my machine…??? Oh, crap! Now I’m definitely worried.

UPDATE
The backing is sewn and the quilt is at the quilters. She’s going to do an all over stipple pattern with bows mixed in. I think that will be nice. Now, let’s hope it gets back soon!

It’s a cute quilt. I’m just very disappointed in the binding.