Thursday, October 1, 2009

thoughts on projects: my first quilt.

lovelies,
hope you are having a lovely week. i am back from a quick-trip to portland. when i returned, one of the first things on my to-do list was to complete my quilt.

if you've been following my progress, you might remember that i began by cutting 5 by 5 inch squares from various fabrics in my stash, along with a few scraps from dress shirts in our goodwill pile. after that, i carefully arranged all of these squares out onto the floor in a madcap fashion, piecing them together with my Janome sewing machine. after that, i found a queen-sized vintage sheet at goodwill for the backing and bought a queen-sized cotton batting from my fabric store. after laying the whole quilt sandwich (backing, batting, top) out onto the floor in my living room, i hand quilted the whole thing at 5 inch intervals (essentially, there is a stitch in the center of each square. finally, i bound the front to the back using my sewing machine.


with the technical specifics of the project in mind, here are my reflections on the process:
i absolutely adored using fabrics that had been languishing in my stash-- there were a few fabrics that had been sitting there for years! also, i will always hunt through my goodwill piles for interesting looking squares in the future. so fun.
i NEED a rotary cutter. my hand was aching by the end of cutting out all of the squares AND the squares are a bit lacking in the precision department.

Also, i love the look of hand-quilting. i had prepared myself for this project to turn out pretty wonky-looking, but it actually looks good! i cannot wait to make my next one.




xxoo

3 comments:

  1. you did it! it looks beautiful! i finally got into your yoga site and will download the podcast tonight - this creaky body needs so much help and this will be a wonderful start!

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  2. your quilt looks wonderful. i love the soothing blues and your bed looks so cozy. a rotary cutter will save your lots of time and pain, but be super careful with it. enjoy your weekend1

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  3. Thank you dolls!

    Cindy, It's so funny that you wrote "be super careful"-- one of the reasons I waited so long to jump on the rotary bandwagon was that I am afraid of cutting off an appendage!
    *)

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