Tuesday, August 31, 2010

One step closer!

The ongoing quilt project is going on. One of my sisters said that I have gone from doing a Big Honkin` Project to doing a Big Ass Honking Project. I think she is right....
I increased my fabric stash substantially buying and rejecting different fabrics for this quilt. I did not plan well, but I have learned a great deal. First lesson: Spend more time planning! Even though there were some fabrics that were rejected for the quilt top, they would all have been fine for the backing. The problem was that most of them were bought online and I did not want to buy too much yardage until I new they would work for me. Anyway, long story short, I decided to make this quilt reversible and use up some those small pieces (1 yard or less) of fabric and this is what I came up with. An easy to piece log cabin design. I put some sashing around the outside edges this morning (no photo yet) and am ready to start sandwiching the quilt this afternoon. I have never quilted anything this large on my sewing machine, so it will be a challenge! Since this will be a quilt that will be used and laundered quite a bit, I plan to do a fairly small stipple stich to quilt it with. Wish me luck!

Friday, August 13, 2010

The making of a quilt....in many stages...

So.... I have this idea for making a quilt. I have fallen in love with kaliedescope quilts and am on my third one. The other two were much smaller (one a tablecloth and one a wall hanging) shown below.


The one I'm working on now is for the couch on my screen porch. It is kind of a couch/bed. My idea is to make a quilt that will fit nicely over the seat of the couch and make matching covers for all the loose pillows on the back of the couch. I keep a quilt on it now, but it does not match anything and looks very tacky... as seen in the photo below....
Here are the first hexagons for the new quilt!


Here I have put together the hexagons for the center of the quilt.



I have added the borders, but it is a full size quilt, so I laid it on table and photographed one corner.
I want to quilt everything at one time and have started on the cushions. I have never quilted a large quilt before, so I wanted to quilt the cusions first. Here are some preliminary shots of the cushions.

This is the back of a small cushion. I had a lot of problems with it. Thread breaks, skipped stitches, and just not having a good plan of what I was going to do with the free motion design.

This is the back side of the one above and I think it looks better than the front! However, I am using scraps for the inside of the cushions and red will definitely not be a part of that room!


This is the front side of the small cushion. I finally diagnosed the problems. I was using the wrong size needle and had my machine set up for 'lightweight' fabric. After I changed the needle and settings, the quilting went much better!

This is the front of one of the large cushions. The quilting went fine and I am quite happy with this one. The back of this cushion will be quilted whole cloth in the dark brown fabric that I used for one of the bordersnand I need to come up with an interesting design. I am kind of looking at the backs of these cushions as ways to practice new free motion quilting designs.

That's all I have done at this time and I have to work tomorrow so I don't expect to get much more done until next week. I will keep posting my progress on this project both to share it with you and to help me organize what my plan for finishing it! I already have plans in the works for my next quilt, so I am anxious to finish this one!