Indie Quilt: Finished!

Finally.  After much procrastination, it's done.

I put off the backing and binding for weeks.  It's my least-favorite part of making a large quilt. It's just so hard to get the fabric completely smooth.  At least the front was already quilted, so I knew that part would look wrinkle-free.  I don't recommend the use of quilt basting spray.  Yikes.  What a mess.  Just ask my poor husband, who really tried to help me with that part.  By the end, our socks were sticking to the floor, and the quilt was crooked and creased.  But we emerged victorious!

This came out exactly as I envisioned it, which nearly never happens to me.  I kinda made it up as I went, with the intent of having large enough pieces of the prints to be able to fully appreciate them.  I just love this fabric! (Indie by Pat Bravo, in case you missed that part.)  I sewed up the strips first, and then quilted as I sewed them together into rows.  The top corner has a blank navy rectangle, which adds  a fun bit of asymmetry.

I detest hand-sewing binding, so I wrapped the edges of the backing around to the front and machine stitched the whole thing.

The backing is a couple of large pieces of my favorite prints from the front.

What I'm Working On: Indie Quilt

I have been hoarding my stash of lovely Indie fabric by Pat Bravo ever since it arrived in my mailbox many months ago.  I knew I wanted to make a quilt for my bed with it, especially after seeing Maureen's.  But I wanted to take my time with it, making sure that I think it through enough beforehand so that I love it in the end.  The fabrics are a mix of florals and geometrics in gorgeous jewel tones. To ground them (and make it a bit more "manly") I am pairing them with a navy Moda Bella solid.

I've been saving ideas on a Pinterest board and collecting some fun coordinating accessories to tie the quilt in to the rest of the room.  The hard part is that I don't know what the room itself will look like--by the time I get this project finished, we will be moving to a new house/town/state thanks to the good old US Coast Guard.  But I want to have it ready to go when we get there, wherever there may be.

Birch-inspired prints by Alaskan artist Katie Sevigny

I snagged two of these awesome wall hooks in the clearance room at Blackbeary Bog in Homer.

I started cutting the fabric this week.  I don't want it to look too planned, but I am just not the type of person who can dive in with no plan at all!  I am basing my design on the Uneven Coins quilt in Block Party.  But I want my "coins" to be large enough to showcase the large-scale prints of the fabric.

 I'm going to try out a method for making the strips that I found in my new book from Tula Pink.  I think it will be a real time saver.

The plan is to make 5 columns of "coins", each column quilted as I go using the method I learned in Rachael's stocking pattern.  Wish me luck!!

Cathedral Window Quilt: Complete!

It's finished!!  I know I got a bit behind on posting each of my blocks in the Cathedral Window Sampler Quilt-along.  You can see the detail on each individual block here in my flickr set.  I love how this came out so much that I decided to take it to one of my favorite spots for a little photo shoot.  I made this for my own living room, with fabrics from Fly a Kite and Outfoxed.  I used Maureen Cracknell Handmade's quilt-as-you go method, so when the quilt along was over all I had to do was sew my blocks together.

I added a cathedral window block of my own, based around a little cathedral window I already had waiting in my stash for just the right project.  Then I added two plain 12.5" squares of fabric to make a 3x4 quilt.  And I even remembered to add a label.

The backing is from Loulouthi by Anna Maria Horner.  I had it in my stash, and it happened to go perfectly.  I used the "self-binding" technique for the backing for the first time.  Basically, I trimmed the backing to 1.5" larger than the quilt (after quilting the backing fabric to the rest of the quilt) and then folded the raw edge of the backing in to meet the raw edge of the front.  Then I pressed the folded edge over the front and machine stitched all the way around.  Voila!  No hand sewing involved.  In the whole quilt.  Hooray for that!!

Here's a little better look at the quilting on the front...although the bright sunshine this morning makes some of it hard to see.

Perfect for a cold Alaskan morning at the beach!  And since the sand is frozen, it didn't even get dirty.

Cathedral Window QAL Block 4 and Quilting As I Go

I worked on block 4 last Friday.  It was super simple, which was a nice change after the complexity of block 3.

You may have noticed that the above block is already quilted.  Oh yes it is!  I have seen many methods of "quilting as you go" but have never tried it myself.  The whole having to hand-sew the backing on the blocks together made it a no-go for me.  But then Maureen Cracknell Handmade posted this awesome (and awesomely simple!) tutorial last week.  I may now actually finish the quilts that I start!  Hooray!  

Basically, her method has you quilt each block to its own square of batting, sew all of the quilted squares together, and then attach the backing with a minimum amount of quilting.  I think it's going to be awesome.  Did I already say that?  Well, fabulous, then.  I tried it out this weekend on my completed blocks, and it works really well for projects such as this where all the blocks are different.  You can really make the quilting complement each block individually.  The only downside of this method, for me anyway, is that the quilting patterns on each block don't translate to the backing fabric.  The backside of the quilting is hidden inside the quilt.  BUT, if I have to choose between paying someone a ton of money to longarm quilt for me, try to quilt myself the traditional way where I need to set up 3 extra tables to hold the bulk of my quilt, or not have the backing show the quilting stitches on the front, then I choose option 3 hands down.  Hiring out a longarm quilter makes the quilt feel like it's not completely my creation.  For that reason, I still haven't completed this quilt for my daughter from August.  I just can't bring myself to try to fit it through my machine, although I know I could do it.  I'm thinking about dismantling it a bit and using the quilt as you go method, and then sewing it back together.  For the first time since I began quilting nearly 10 years ago, the quilting part is actually fun!

Here's a little peek at my quilting so far:

Pins and more pins

This block was a little tricky, because my needle kept getting stuck in the Heat n Bond that was used in its construction.  I ended up quilting just the little background squares that peek through the stripes.

Back of Block 3

Block 3: I loved quilting this one!

Back of Block 3

Block 4

Back of Block 4

Ooh, I can't wait to finish this!