Thursday, January 15, 2009

Sound of Music Quilt completed

I received my walking foot in the mail and finally got around to quilting this quilt for my daughter, L. This was my first time to machine quilt and so I can't really tell you that the walking foot makes a huge difference, etc. as I've never done machine quilting with just a regular foot. However, it does seem like it works. I just had to determine how much I need to smooth out the layers of fabric. It has a couple puckers on the backside. I did redo a couple also, but left a couple others. L. won't care and for my first one I'm not going to stress about it.
Here is the completed quilt--already getting put to use on L.'s bed, even though it isn't made to fit her twin sized bed.I did put on traditional binding, but machine topstitched it so that I wouldn't have to hand sew it. BIG YUCK!! I do not like doing it if I don't have to and for this project I didn't have to. The quilt is going to get used daily and I want it to stay together.


After completing L.'s quilt I STILL had leftover scraps from the costumes. So I decided to try a little something different and make a baby quilt. (This is where the OCD kicks in--you just can't throw any amount of scraps away, and if one quilt is good then 2 must be better). I checked out a number of books from our local library on quilting and found this pattern in "Thinking Outside the Block" by Sandi Cummings. The quilt in her book was called Cutting Double Baby Quilt. There are a couple other variations in there that I want to try.......but not right now.
Front side...
Back Side...and below the binding edge. I wanted to use up all the scraps thus the backside is a bit unconvential--really no rhyme or reason to any of it that I did. But I think it is still alright.L. thinks she should get the baby quilt too. I'm not sure what is going to happen with it. I know enough people having babies in the next couple of months that maybe one of them will get it. Hubby thinks the dark blue looks too girly--even though it is shells. So we'll see. We have a long weekend off from school so maybe we'll have to have a little quilting class and L. can make her own baby quilt and do with it whatever she wants.

7 comments:

  1. Ooh I love that baby quilt. Awesome pattern.

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  2. I wouldn't call it "girly" by any means. Love the crazy pattern on the baby one, too! Did you use a thick batting? It looks quite fluffy.

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  3. I'd say that's pretty good for your first try! I have made several and also use a quilting foot and still have trouble with puckering. SO ANNOYING!! I pin the crap out of it beforehand and try to use the lowest loft batting as possible, but it still happens occasionally. Oh well, I still enjoy the process so I guess that's the main thing. Also, I love that you used the scraps for the backing as well, I wouldn't have ever done that, and I think it makes it unique, and cost effective too :)

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  4. You are too good! Love the quilt. In this cold, it is the perfect thing to snuggle up to to stay warm!

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  5. Great look on your quilts. I have a walking foot too, and so far haven't been able to do a perfect job without any tucks. I know some people use a big quilting hoop to keep everything smooth. Hopefully I can get better.

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  6. so i'm making a baby blanket and decided to try out the disappearing nine patch. It went really fast but I had some issues with ironing the seams. Do you switch them up or keep them consistent? There are a few off corners because the seams are going in the same direction.

    Any suggestions?

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  7. O.K. Katelyn...here's what I did.

    I ironed ALL seams OPEN. Not sure if that is how the quilters really do it or not, but with cotton fabric it seemed like the easiest thing to do. It helps to iron as you go. i.e. sew 3 down and iron open those seams on your strip before combining it with the second and third strip. Then you would iron those strips open (the entire length of 3 squares) before cutting and rearranging.

    If you put the entire 9 patch back together and then sew 4 of those together to make the quilt you may have to square up each 9 patch a little bit before combining them all.

    Otherwise for this quilt I just arranged all the cut pieces into long strips and sewed them that way--repeating the ironing. Press open between each seam going down. And then press open the seams the entire length of the strip (for mine--about 7 cut pieces).

    If this doesn't make sense, drop us another email and we'll see if we can help you figure it out. And email us a picture too. We'd love to see your project.

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