Quiltivate

Finished Gray Lazy

The Gray Lazy, just-for-fun Nine-Patch is finished! It has already come in very handy around the apartment with San Francisco's amazing summer (autumn-like) weather.

Although I have hand-quilted several quilts made by friends, this is only the seventh quilt I've made on my own from start-to-finish! I can think of lots and lots of things I could have done better on this latest quilt, but overall, I think it's a significant improvement over the last six. Here are a few of the things I did differently this time around:

 

Two-Sided Quilt: Instead of doing a quilt top and a quilt back, I made two quilt tops (one with gray sashing; the other with blue sashing). I did the cross-hatch hand-quilting based on the gray side so it's a little bit off on most of the blue side, but the effect is still okay even on the "back."

Flannel As Batting: I actually only used flannel instead of batting because I had flannel on-hand and didn't have enough batting for this size of quilt. But I think this was a serendipitous deal - the weight of this little flannel-batting quilt is just right for around the apartment. I like the warmth of the Warm & Natural batting for wintertime bed quilts, but I may purposefully use flannel for mid-weight quilts in the future.

 

Binding: The greatest improvement I made on this quilt as compared to my previous quilts was definitely in the binding. Three things I did differently:

1. Improv Binding - I wanted to do the binding in the gray fabric, but I didn't have quite enough gray. I had lots of squares of the fabric I used for the blocks left, so I threw in several of those and I'm so glad I did! I might do things like this on all future bindings. 

2. Real Slip-Stitch - To bind my quilts, I machine-sew the binding onto the front of the quilt then "slip-stitch" it onto the back. In the past, I've haven't exactly been carefully hiding the stitches on the back. But I was very careful this time around and it was worth the extra effort.

3. Corners - Another area I've sort-of just hodge-podged my way through before was corners ... and they looked like it. I had to re-do it a few times on the first corner to get it right, but it's great to finally know how to handle binding corners like a real quilter.

It was a fun one to make! And I'm glad to have it to myself to enjoy. 

Now, what's next?

Gray Lazy Nine-Patch Quilt

The for-fun quilt I started last week is all assembled and I even started quilting this weekend! I'm calling this the Gray Lazy quilt because it's just the right size for lazing around the apartment. And it's my very first "just for fun" quilt - no recipient in mind at this point!

I started with a few of the nine-patch blocks I made when I did the Crazy Mom Nine-Patch Quilt-Along last November (all of the fabrics are pre-washed, pre-cut 3" squares from Stitch Simple). I got a bunch of solid fabric in gray and blue from my co-Bay-Area-Modern-Quilt-Guild friend Amy a la Mode at our last meeting, so I used some of it for sashing here (reason #854 to join a quilt guild, by the way: fabric swapping).

 

I did the same thing for the back of the quilt except I didn't have enough gray, so I used blue (also from Amy - thanks, Amy, for dumping your excess on us). I think I like the contrast of the gray sashing better, but it's fun to have a quilt with two slightly-different personalities.

The hand-quilting I started was the good, old faithful crosshatch. Seemed like a great idea when I started it, but realized when I was looking over my handiwork last night that my blocks on top don't exactly line up with the blocks on the back, so the stitching on the back is off-point by about 1/4". Oh, well - guess I'll keep this quilt for myself and chalk it up to a learning experience for next time.

One thing I realized assembling this quilt: I am really, really bad at estimating how long assembling things will take me. I told my husband, "I'm just going to add sashing then quilt the blocks together, so this should only take me a couple of hours total." But my extreme optimism got the best of me again. It took me three nights of intense sewing and pressing to do both sides (probably a total of about 12 hours ... not two). Am I super slow, or does it take everyone else this long for a task like this?

It's a super fun and inspiring little project though, and I'm excited to forge ahead on it and start the next thing soon.

Have you started any new projects recently? I'd love to hear what you're up to! 

Two Quilt Backing Tutorials

Kathy Mack has posted two fantastic backing tutorials on her Pink Chalk Studio blog. The first tutorial is for non-directional prints using a side-to-side method; the second method is a pieced method that is best for directional prints. Check 'em out!

Kathy is another fantastic teacher - be sure to subscribe to the Pink Chalk Studio blog and download her tutorials. She also has a great online fabric shop, Pink Chalk Fabrics - don't miss it: