Quilting

I promised my daughter when we moved that I'd make her a new quilt. We moved a year ago. I bought the fabric right away, and it has been sitting in my cupboard, calling my name ever since...

"Hazel, remember us? You promised to make us into something beautiful! We've been waiting so patiently!"

I decided to make the quilt this summer. It has to get finished. And I hadn't even started it yet.

I originally wanted to make Amy Butler's Sexy Hexy Love quilt, but the thought of that much cutting made my head spin. I love fabric. I love sewing it. I do not love cutting. In fact, if I could get someone else to do all of my cutting for me so that I could just get on with sewing, it would be a perfect world.

So I went back to the proverbial drawing board. The girlchild said last year that she wanted her room to be "like a garden". She has a fluffy green carpet, a tree decal on her wall, and I painted her room a lovely robin's egg blue. The quilt is going to be a rainbow. All good, right? Well, I wanted the quilt to be not too traditional, but not too modern either. That's why I loved the Sexy Hexy. So I figured I'd look at other Amy Butler patterns. They're free, after all, and funky as all get out.

Girlie and I looked at patterns, and finally decided on Amy's Window to the Soul quilt. The pieces are large, so there's not too much cutting (or piecing) to be done. And it works with the whole rainbow theme, don't you think?

I started it today. Of course, I didn't read the pattern before attempting to start, so I didn't realize that this quilt required anything beyond a cutting mat and sewing machine. We ended up having to go to the grocery store to buy freezer paper. I'd never done freezer paper piecing before. The reason this quilt uses this technique is because the centre of the quilt is all cut on the bias, so the likelihood of stretching the fabrics is high. By using the freezer paper technique, the edges of the fabric are stabilized, and nothing gets stretched out of shape.

By 5pm, I had this finished. The corners are all sharp, thanks to the freezer paper. I was quite satisfied with my progress, and loved how the quilt was coming together.

It is always nice when you can work on a project and be satisfied with your progress despite any hiccups (like not having all of your supplies in order and having to walk to the grocery store in 28 degree heat to buy what you need).

I learned two lessons today. Always, always, ALWAYS read the pattern before you begin (you'd think I'd never done this before) and beware of pins. The quilt foot on my new machine doesn't play nicely with pins, and if I'd been working with smaller pieces of fabric, I wouldn't have bothered with pins. But that wasn't the case.

Since the foot doesn't work with pins (yes, I do sew over them), I had to pin parallel with the edge of the fabric instead of perpendicular. I'm right handed, so I pinned from right to left (the pointy end stuck out of the left). This doesn't sound like a big deal, but as I sewed, the pointy ends of the pins went toward the machine, and stabbed me in the finger as I was sewing. This is a new sewing injury for me. Usually it is shoulder tension and neck pain, as my posture while sewing is terrible. I have, on occasion, stuck myself while pinning. I've never had this injury before. So, rather than try to continue working with a bum finger, I decided that I'd made enough progress for one day.

More to come as I progress!