25 Years in the Making...
I finally finished a quilt I had started more than 2 decades ago and presented it to Don for Valentine's Day. Teaser:
Full story and more photos here:
If you have been to my house in the last 25 or so years, particularly if you have been allowed in my studio, you have probably seen this quilt in various stages of development. I started it 2 houses ago, while taking a class at my local quilt shop called "Fast Trip Around the World" with Connie Pomering. As promised, the pattern is Trip Around the World, but Connie had a "fast"-er way of working it up than just cutting out hundreds of little squares and then piecing them all together. Instead, we sewed strips of fabric into "strata", and then cut the strips crosswise into pieced strips, which were then carefully sewn together in sequence. Trust me, it makes sense, and it works.
If you quilt, you know that one of the best ways to choose a color scheme which will work is to find a "key" fabric that you LOVE and then choose all the other fabrics to coordinate and/or complement that key fabric. I fell in love with this fabric, seen here as the eventual border for my quilt:
I've always loved bright colors, and tropical prints, and remember, it was the 80's.
I had cut out all the strips, and sewn the strata, and cross-cut the strata into strips, and had completed 1/4 of the top before we moved to Colorado. At that point I had completed another queen-size quilt and a matching windowshade, and a big puffy lap quilt. The years we spent in Colorado I spent in many artistic pursuits, including making another big puffy lap quilt for my mom, and I also managed to pull this quilt out off and on and work on it. I think I had finished 3/4 of the top before we moved back to Illinois. Why so slow? I always had something else to do...
Over the last 12 years I have, at intervals of a year or two, finished the last quarter of the top... sewn the quarters together into one piece... Finally found a backing fabric that would work, that I had in sufficient quantity to back another queen-size quilt... Finally figured out what inner border to use and piece together... Sewn the inner border on, then sewn the outer border onto the quilt... Pin-basted the whole quilt "sandwich": quilt top, batting, and backing. I even (a year or so ago) FINALLY got around to starting to machine-quilt it. Unfortunately, I forgot to use my walking foot on the sewing machine, and six or so rows of quilting got horrendously messes up, at which point I threw the thing in a corner in disgust, wondering if it would EVER get done.
Now mind you, I am not hopeless. I had by this time finished three more quilts of lap-size or smaller, and started a good many others. For some reason this quilt was just something I never could work on for more than a few days at a time before something else more shiny would grab my attention. But when my husband was out of town for 2 weeks in late January/early February I decided I would damn well finish this sucker, which he had always loved and often hoped to see done. I would pick out all the bad quilting, do it right this time, and have it ready for him for Valentine's Day. I figured a good two, maybe three days work remained.
Yeah, right.
I had been quilting at my machine for four days and hadn't done more than half of it. Clearly I suck at time management and planning. But I was not going to quit this time because I had a deadline. After seven days of sewing I had finally gotten it quilted, and had to figure out how to bind it. That necessitated a trip to the fabric store, where I opted, in the interest of time, for pre-made bias binding. Making my own would have added at least another day. It wasn't quite finished by the time he got back, but since he was at work on Valentine's Day I had just enough time to finish it, tie off all the threads, clip, snip and pick off all the spare bits of thread, batting, lint and what-have-you, and fold it and tie it up with ribbon. The photo above is how I presented it to him.
He loved it. It was really gratifying to know HOW MUCH he loved it, because he had been looking forward to seeing it finished since I brought the beginnings home from class. Best V-Day present I've come up with for a long time.
And here is the full quilt, as best I could photograph it while Don stood on a stepladder and held it up:
So. Finished. Finally.I would feel great about that... except for how long it inexplicably took me. And how many other projects I have to finish. And how long it took me to clean the house I had neglected while finishing the thing... Oh, well, I've been told I'm a little too hard on myself, so there's that.
Full story and more photos here:
If you have been to my house in the last 25 or so years, particularly if you have been allowed in my studio, you have probably seen this quilt in various stages of development. I started it 2 houses ago, while taking a class at my local quilt shop called "Fast Trip Around the World" with Connie Pomering. As promised, the pattern is Trip Around the World, but Connie had a "fast"-er way of working it up than just cutting out hundreds of little squares and then piecing them all together. Instead, we sewed strips of fabric into "strata", and then cut the strips crosswise into pieced strips, which were then carefully sewn together in sequence. Trust me, it makes sense, and it works.
If you quilt, you know that one of the best ways to choose a color scheme which will work is to find a "key" fabric that you LOVE and then choose all the other fabrics to coordinate and/or complement that key fabric. I fell in love with this fabric, seen here as the eventual border for my quilt:
I've always loved bright colors, and tropical prints, and remember, it was the 80's.
I had cut out all the strips, and sewn the strata, and cross-cut the strata into strips, and had completed 1/4 of the top before we moved to Colorado. At that point I had completed another queen-size quilt and a matching windowshade, and a big puffy lap quilt. The years we spent in Colorado I spent in many artistic pursuits, including making another big puffy lap quilt for my mom, and I also managed to pull this quilt out off and on and work on it. I think I had finished 3/4 of the top before we moved back to Illinois. Why so slow? I always had something else to do...
Over the last 12 years I have, at intervals of a year or two, finished the last quarter of the top... sewn the quarters together into one piece... Finally found a backing fabric that would work, that I had in sufficient quantity to back another queen-size quilt... Finally figured out what inner border to use and piece together... Sewn the inner border on, then sewn the outer border onto the quilt... Pin-basted the whole quilt "sandwich": quilt top, batting, and backing. I even (a year or so ago) FINALLY got around to starting to machine-quilt it. Unfortunately, I forgot to use my walking foot on the sewing machine, and six or so rows of quilting got horrendously messes up, at which point I threw the thing in a corner in disgust, wondering if it would EVER get done.
Now mind you, I am not hopeless. I had by this time finished three more quilts of lap-size or smaller, and started a good many others. For some reason this quilt was just something I never could work on for more than a few days at a time before something else more shiny would grab my attention. But when my husband was out of town for 2 weeks in late January/early February I decided I would damn well finish this sucker, which he had always loved and often hoped to see done. I would pick out all the bad quilting, do it right this time, and have it ready for him for Valentine's Day. I figured a good two, maybe three days work remained.
Yeah, right.
I had been quilting at my machine for four days and hadn't done more than half of it. Clearly I suck at time management and planning. But I was not going to quit this time because I had a deadline. After seven days of sewing I had finally gotten it quilted, and had to figure out how to bind it. That necessitated a trip to the fabric store, where I opted, in the interest of time, for pre-made bias binding. Making my own would have added at least another day. It wasn't quite finished by the time he got back, but since he was at work on Valentine's Day I had just enough time to finish it, tie off all the threads, clip, snip and pick off all the spare bits of thread, batting, lint and what-have-you, and fold it and tie it up with ribbon. The photo above is how I presented it to him.
He loved it. It was really gratifying to know HOW MUCH he loved it, because he had been looking forward to seeing it finished since I brought the beginnings home from class. Best V-Day present I've come up with for a long time.
And here is the full quilt, as best I could photograph it while Don stood on a stepladder and held it up:
So. Finished. Finally.I would feel great about that... except for how long it inexplicably took me. And how many other projects I have to finish. And how long it took me to clean the house I had neglected while finishing the thing... Oh, well, I've been told I'm a little too hard on myself, so there's that.