Quilt #5: Quilt Along Quilt Complete and Delivered!

Way back in April  I learned of an online quilt-along hosted by Becoming Martha and Create.Craft.Love. At that point, I had made three quilts (which you can see here, here, and here). It was just enough to know that there was a lot I didn't know about quilting! I thought a quilt-along would be a great way to learn how to do things the right way and meet some new friends.

I won't provide a written tutorial here because Jill and Sarah covered that pretty well, but I will instead show my progress along the way, with links to Jill and Sarah's tutorials.

Announcing the Quilt Along

Source: All People Quilt

Gathering Supplies

I decided pretty early on that I was going to make this quilt for my niece, Lindsey, who was turning three. It had been more than two years since we had been to the Netherlands, so she didn't remember meeting her Tante Jen. Lindsey's mom told me she loves Hello kitty, animals, and pink, so I took those ideas with me to Joann to pick out fabric.

I came up with these fabrics, which I now I should note the names of, for future reference. Consider that New Thing Learned #1. The star of my fabric selections of course is Hello Kitty. I'm happy I overestimated how much fabric I would need because Joann stopped carrying this style about a week after I bought it!

I used PowerPoint to give me a visual template of what the quilt would look like, even though I would be following the directions from the quilt-along hosts.

For the back of the quilt, I was planning to use one of the pinks until I found this Hello Kitty fabric shower curtain on clearance at Target. (Note my fancy portable craft room to the right).

When I started this quilt, I was still using our dining room as my craft room. Since we eat meals at the dining table every night, I needed to be able to quickly put everything away free from messy 4 yo diners. Thus, my love for Sterilite containers continues.

Cutting Your Fabric

Before this quilt, I had only sewn with squares, which I cut out with square templates. When I started cutting out this quilt, I made a rectangular template.

After I had painstakingly cut out all 84 rectangles, I came across a cutting tutorial on how to squaring fabric, and using the rotary cutter to cut in strips to make more uniform pieces. I saved that info for my next quilt and made life much easier. Lesson #2: Cut pieces with the fewest number of cuts for a higher rate of accuracy.

This method really would have come in handy for the long sashes, which were a bear to cut.

Piecing the Quilt

The first part of the pieces went pretty smoothly. With the slim strips, I didn't even have to pin.

Lesson #3: Pressing the seams open makes a big difference in the way the fabric lays. This is really helpful when you are attaching twenty-three strips!

Because I didn't follow lesson #1, my rows were a little crooked. I found that by piecing it in smaller groups of 7-8 strips, I was able to straighten it out a bit. 

This was my first quilt with sashing and borders.  

It took me a long time to finish this quilt because we had a two week trip to Florida for Niels' work right in the middle of the quilt-along, Marissa leaving, and--as you can see--I started to convert Marissa's room into my craft room.

I had another delay when I learned that a friend of mine had a stroke. I whipped up quilt #4--look to the left on the photo below for a sneak peek--to snuggle up with during her recovery. 

Finally, as we started counting down the days to our trip to the Netherlands, I kicked into high gear and completed the quilt top! 

Quilting the Quilt

This was the first time I actually quilted a quilt. Two of my previous quilts were rag quilts (Thomas the Train and Monogram Minky). The third quilt I just made my own way, which was a lot more complicated than it needed to be! A big incentive for me in joining the quilt-along was learning how things are supposed to be done. Of course, that didn't stop me from veering a little off course, but at least I learned some good fundamentals. Lesson #4 was the entire process of quilting.

For the back, I knew I wanted to use the shower curtain to make it reversible, but until the front was pieced together, I didn't know much adjusting needed to be done.  As it turned out, the quilt was much longer and slightly narrower than the shower curtain. 

I added about a foot of pink fabric used on the quilt front to the top and bottom of the shower curtain, which I centered the quilt. Then I sewed the sides together and trimmed the excess.

Once everything was flush, I flipped the shower curtain back side so that the wrong side was facing up.

After smoothing it out as much as I could, I used t-pins to secure them to our carpeting.

Next I put down the batting and smoothed it out. I bought queen size because that's what the directions called for, so I had a lot left over that I trimmed loosely away. I used t-pins to secure the batting to the carpet.

Finally, I put the quilt top down, face up, on top of the back and batting, and made another round with thet-pins. That baby wasn't moving!

Next, I put a curved safety pin to baste, or attach the layers, in each rectangular and every 8" or so around the border. I learned that curved safety pins are easier to handle than curved, and that the Dritz brand was easier to work with than the Singer. I think the former were sharper because they went through the three layers of material easier.

Once all the safety pins were in--all 80 of them!--I rolled up the quilt from short ends to the middle. I learned that it's good to start quilting (stitching all three layers together) from the middle and working out. Between that and the pins, the fabric is less likely to move around. 

I bought myself a walking food because I was told by the sweet quilting ladies I hope to hang out with in the fall that it pushes the fabric a little better so the layers don't catch. I used the "stitch in the ditch" method of quilting where I just followed the lines on the top of my quilt.  

I liked the way it looked on the back when I was done. I found this part to be quite relaxing. I just put a couple movies on my iPad and stitched along. It took just over two movies to quilt the whole thing. A lot of people send out larger quilts to be quilted by professions with big long arm machines and fun designs, but I wanted to learn this part of the process so I'm glad I did it. 

When I was happy with my lines, I took out all the safety pins.

Binding the Quilt

Binding a quilt was a new experience for me as well (big ol' lesson #5). The first step was to trim off the excess backing and batting. I was a little nervous about this because I didn't want to accidentally cut too much and then have to throw myself into fetal position and have a good cry. Fortunately, it was a fairly painless process.

It was at this stage that I learned about the importance of squaring of my fabric before cutting it. This is not something I will forget again.

Like quilting, there is an easier way to bind a quilt. Apparently you can buy pre-made binding. I did not know this, and, in the interest in learning to do each step myself, I got lots of practice cutting strips. 

 I sewed each piece together to make one continuous strip.

I spent some quality time with my iron, pressing all the seams and trimming off all the little notches.

Then I folded the first part of the strip over, and started pressing the entire long strip in half.

It took a LONG time, but I ended up with this pretty roll of binding.

Next I pinned the binding to the back side of the quilt.

And tucked the end into the beginning, like this.

Then I sewed the binding, attaching the start to the end.

Finally, I flipped the binding over to the other side, pinned and sewed again. (Here you also get a sneak peak at my stained craft table top, which I did myself. But that's a topic for another post).

At long last, my quilt is done done done ditty DONE!

One last final touch.

And I even had time to whip up a matching pillowcase/travel bag.

Quilt Reveals!

When you click on the link above, you'll see Jill's dino quilt reveal with links for other quilt-alongers big reveals.

My big reveal took place in the Netherlands, when I presented this quilt to Lindsey and her mom. Well, Lindsey was less excited about the reveal.

 

But very excited about how fun it was to play peek-a-boo with it. 

The happy recipient. 

Paid in full.

Linked to: 

36th Avenue * 52 Mantels * Crystal & Co. * Diana Rambles * DIY Dreamer * Fluster Buster *  It's Overflowing * Kathe with an E * Life After Laundry * Made in a Day * Mums Make Lists * My Snippets on Inspiration * NY Melrose Family * Pursuit of a Functional Home *  Real Coake Family * Real Housemoms * Serenity Now * Sparkles & a Stove * Tumbleweed Contessa