Amazingly Quick Quilt

 Combine a wonderful book and clearance fabric already pre-cut into blocks, add a Mom visiting for the weekend and you will have a wonderful quilt in four days! This was my first dip into Modern Quilting and I am in love...



My biggest worry about machine quilting was that I would get bunches of wrinkles and tucks and spend more time ripping out stitches than sewing. I would rather pick pills off all my sweaters before ripping stitches out of an entire quilt. So I ironed the pieced top three times, I should note as I sewed the top together in strips I ironed it so all the seams lay in one direction. I also ironed the batting and the backing, to keep it smooth!

Unfortunately or maybe it was fortune, I made this quilt during a snowstorm which meant the light in the house was just terrible for picture taking. I had to wait two days until the storm was over so I could drag my blankie around the great outdoors for a photo shoot.

Incidently I think the yellow was a great choice of color to work with during a dark and cold winter week. I just love the backing of the quilt, don't you? All the ironing did pay off, as well as a lot of pins to hold it together, although I would recommend safety pins as my hands were really scratched up and bleeding my the time I was done.

My great idea to hang the quilt from the tree branch didn't work so well as the wind kept blowing it down. I was trying to capture the look of how I placed the blocks so the gray faded into yellow on a diagonal. When I started quilting, I chose a block in the middle and sewed out from there, that way any wrinkles that came up, I could hopefully smooth them out. As far as I know, there weren't any major wrinkles, but I haven't wanted to look at the back too closely.

Into the wash it went after that ordeal, my fingers were completely numb and my face was aching from the below zero wind chill. Oh what we do for a good quilt...