finish my quilt

I’ve started picking up this project again as the heat wave is over and Maine is back to pleasant summer temperatures. I’m doing the “in-the-ditch” straight line quilting around all the blocks and sashing rows. This is going very well. The even-feed foot was money well spent. I tested my free motion foot on some spare fabric and batting and I have to say that all the freehand machine quilting ahead of me intimidates the heck out of me. I didn’t get very good results with my test piece with the stitch length varying considerably depending on how fast I was stitching.

I would love any advice the more experienced quilters have for me! Or will I have to do the curvy, fancy quilting by hand? Hand sewing is a chore for me so I hope not.

I’ve got my quilt all basted with safety pins and I started machine quilting just to test out how hard it is going to be. But the weather has gotten HOT here in Maine. (Well, at least for northern New England! It’s cool compared to other parts of the world but I have no a/c and live in a third floor apartment that has enough sun to be a greenhouse.) So I refuse to feel guilty that this project is at a standstill for now. I can’t think about sitting at the machine with a quilt on my lap as I sew. I’m really excited about how well this project has gone though. For a first quilt, I think it is really beautiful. I can’t wait till the weather breaks and I can get back to finishing it.

The top is DONE. I ended up using a single fabric around 3 sides of the quilt to give me the final dimensions I wanted. It is now roughly 84×99. Last night I moved all the furniture out of my dining room (the only room in my small-ish apartment that could possibly work for this) and layered the backing, cotton batting and top. I started the basting but wow is that a lot of time spent kneeling on the floor to baste every four inches across the whole top! I got about half-way through before calling it quits for the night. I also under-estimated the amount of curved safety pins I would need. The box of 300 is almost empty! The process seems to be going well though. I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to get everything to lay smooth and flat but it looks pretty good. I need to go buy more pins today and then I’ll finish the basting tonight if all goes well.

Today I finished putting on all the borders that the kit calls for. It looks great. However, the top only measures 74×95 which doesn’t fit the width of my queen bed. I am planning on adding an additional border around the sides and bottom to make it measure about 84×99. I don’t really need the extra length, just the width, but I think it will look best with the border continuing around the bottom. The top won’t be as visible so I’ll leave that as is. I think this will look quite nice in the end. I can’t decide whether I should use one fabric to frame those three sides or to add a cornerstone piece at the bottom two corners to continue the pattern that’s already there. It will probably look fine either way and it would be simpler to just do a plain border to finish it off. I need to figure out how to cut such long pieces with my limited space and tools. All the other pieces were pre-cut which made this a beginning quilter’s dream come true!
I’m so pleased with how it’s coming out so far. Hopefully I don’t screw up this border and the quilting process!

I’m finally back to work on this quilt that I started ages ago. It’s my first one and from a kit (is that cheating?) but it is still a little intimidating for a novice sewer like me. I now have the largest part of the quilt top done. I am busy making the borders and will then be ready to attach them to the top. But then… I will have to figure out how to go about batting/backing/binding and actually “quilting” my quilt. Still a lot of work left, but I should have the top done in the next couple of days.