Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Monday, July 21, 2014

saturday snapshots.








studying. reminiscing. cooking. packing.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Thursday, July 10, 2014

quilted.


don't mind the sunburned face...just soaking up southern california before i go. so excited the quilt is officially a finished product!

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

quilting, part 3.

so last i left off, the batting had been sewn to the front panel:

next step was to pin the backing to the front/batting combination, with right sides together. once pinned, i sewed along the edges to create about a half-inch border. (because this was my first go-round at quilting, i decided to skip traditional binding...maybe next time!)  i left a section unsewn to be able to flip the quilt so that the right sides were out - next time i would make sure not to leave that section right at a corner! - and then pinned that section and sewed it up.

unfortunately while i was pinning that, an uncapped pen decided to make its mark. an immediate dose of stain remover and a cold-wash cycle helped hide the worst of it, though!

my first thought was to do a zig-zag machine stitch along the seams to "quilt", but that quickly showed itself to be a no-go. the quilt was large enough to be unwieldy on the machine, and since i don't have a quilting foot, the traditional foot pushed the fabric so that it gathered unevenly at the end of each zig-zag segment. so i thought i would try hand-quilting along the seams. i spent a bit of time and managed to make my way through four and a half rows of basic stitching:



while i liked the look, eventually, i realized that this option wasn't going to work either - it was really slow going. while that normally wouldn't be an issue, i have a lot going on, and most of all i wanted this quilt completely done before i move. so i ripped it all out, grabbed some embroidery thread, picked two of the four fabrics and put a tie in the center of each square of those two fabrics.

in short order, i had my quilt! it's not perfect but it's cozy, home-made, and best of all, DONE.