Day 32 - Make a Quilt

Date: February 7th, 2010

What's the first thing you think of when you think of quilting?  If you're anything like me, you remember the alphabet game on long road trips and how utterly beautiful a conquest it was to be the first person to see that Quilt Shoppe sign.  I used to own at that game.  Kalamazoo Quilt Shoppe and X-Ray Zone?  If only there were things with L, M, N, O, P, R, T, U, V, W, and Y right next door.  Game over kids.  Game over.

If you're more like my gramma, I'm guessing the comforts of home and family are what come to mind first.  That's because most people have at least one positive, wholesome experience with a quilt.  And most teenagers have at least one unwholesome (though still probably rather positive) experience with a quilt as well.  In my family, quilts are rarely, if ever store bought.  My gramma, you see, is a world class quilter.  She's got a license plate holder that says she'd rather be at a quilt show.  Try cutting someone off in traffic with that car.  Its the instant tea mix of insult and injury.

She makes beautiful quilts of all shapes, sizes and patterns.  She has a fully finished basement we call the quilter's palace.  There are boxes upon boxes upon boxes of perfectly sorted, folded and cataloged fabric from every decade after about the Civil War.  I think it goes without saying that when quilting made the list of things I'm doing this year, I knew who to talk to about teaching me the skills to pay the bills.

I wanted to do something that was slightly more complicated than sewing square pieces together, but not mind-meltingly complex.  There's plenty of room for balance between those two extremes.  Don't believe me?  Here.  I'll show you.

 

This quilt is so boring I want to punch a kitten.

This quilt is so hard I want to punch a kitten.

Now, as a general rule, I don't want a kitten to get punched and neither does my awesome gramma (that I know of), so we decided on the happy middle ground of beginner's quilt patterns.  I wanted something with nice, bright colors that would fit in the neon pink rejection of manhood that is my office.  It would take more than a day, according to my gramma, to make a full size quilt or even a half sized one.  For that reason, we went for an arty, picture sized quilt.  That was significantly more doable.

 

This is my fabric pile.  It is impressive.  Be impressed.

Once the fabrics were picked out, the first step was to measure very freakin' carefully and then cut.  When I say measure carefully, I mean don't even think about being sloppy.  Sloppy is for Joe's, not quilts.  Its a motto.  Deal with it.

 

 

Dear OCD, thank you for me having you.  Love, Kristen.

Because so much of quilting is the patchwork of the design, being off by even a little could cause serious problems.  Each of those piles had four squares - two that were two inches on each side and two that were one inch on each side.  Like I said - its a small quilt.  It was super important to make sure that we had all the pieces we needed for it.  Partly to practice cutting and partly because of the assumption that I, as a new quilter, would mess up and it would be easier just to start over; there are twice as many squares there as we actually needed.

 

Pictured: Me being totally badass.

Now, once the pieces were sewn into squares, they were sewn again into rectangles and then into the center pieces for my quilt.  And by "they were sewn" I mean that I sewed them.  I can totally prove it - I have two witnesses.  My gramma, of course, was there to see my mad quilting awesomeness.  But my friend Ryan also came to join the party.  Why?  Because my gramma is awesome and Ryan is also a purveyor of the clothed arts.

 

We both wore that hat.

But its my blog.

So Ryan's picture is getting posted.

Deal with it.

So.  I'm going to break the interweb's forth wall for a second to tell you that I wrote out and deleted the paragraph that goes here about four times.  The reason is that I can't seem to stop myself from pointing out all the little things wrong with the quilt I made.  My gramma had a word of advice while we were making it -- if you can't see the flaws on a moving horse at thirty yards then they aren't a big deal.

 

Riddled with inconsistencies.

Once the piecing was done we had to put on our border, sandwich and pin and then quilt.  That's right.  All that stuff I talked about above this point wasn't the actual quilting.  It was the piecing of the front panel, minus the border, in preparation for quilting.  How I do adore intricate tasks.  Turns out my quilt was pretty even - it was 12 inches by 9 inches when it was done - almost to the exact inch.  Translation for all you non-quilters out there: I'm awesome.

 

My confidence is scarred by my mentor's disapproval.

Quilting is quite a lot of fun on the machine.  It is essentially really important tracing, but with a needle and thread.  You run along the seams of your design (in basic quilting like what I did) to secure the top piece to the batting (the super-soft, awesome stuffing) and the backing.  More complex quilting is where you see the curved lines of thread running through the whole quilt, not following the pattern of the squares.  The whole purpose is to secure the pieces to each other.  Then people gotta get all fancy and whatnot.  Like, oh, it isn't good enough to drive a nice, dependable Ford Focus... you need a darn Maserati to get where you're going.  I spit on your opulence.

 

Pictured: Easy mode.

The last thing to do after the quilting and trimming of the lower layers is to create and attach a binding around the outside.  So... that picture up there is me at "almost done" phase.  My gramma wasn't kidding when she said it would take more than a day to make a big quilt.  That picture was taken at 8PM and I got there around 11:30AM.  It was definitely a tiring, but wonderful project.  I like quilting a lot.  As the hobby style activities I've done go, I think quilting is the one I've enjoyed the most.  I'm working on a larger project with my gramma in our free time that will be more complex so... I'll post pictures when that is eventually finished.  And speaking of pictures...

 

My Masterpiece.  Click to Enlarge.

Then play "find Kristen's missed stitches".

Its fun for the whole family!