Spring Finish

Finally finished what was actually a really quick quilt.  It just took forever because I had so little time for quilting this past couple of weeks.  It's a picnic quilt (70" x 50") based on Elizabeth Hartman's Crazy Nine Patch Lattice quilt design.  By the way, if you don't follow her blog, Oh, Fransson!, check it out- she designs and makes beautiful quilts!  I would have loved to use a white background for this quilt as Elizabeth does, but I was a bit skittish about using a white fabric on a quilt that a 19 month old girl was going to be using so much.  We went with a copper color- it's Kona, and I am over the moon about it.

The pattern is kind of a wonky 9 patch with 10 inch finished blocks.  I upped the size from 7 1/2 inches because I just needed a bit bigger quilt, but didn't want to make something like 20 additional blocks.

The quilting is what I have heard called "Matchstick" quilting.  I used a walking foot to make straight lines across the quilt in random places, with a finished look similar to a pile of matchsticks.  The above picture shows a very wrinkled finished product, but you are able to see the quilting a bit more in this shot.  Since the colors are orange, green, and brown, I chose four different colors of thread to quilt (light brown, dark brown, orange, and green).  You can see them a bit better in this next picture.

You can also see the random lines of the matchstick quilting.  It's a nice "design" because as long as you can stitch a straight line, it's pretty fast and easy.   All you need is a walking foot and some masking (painter's) tape. :)

Once again, the binding is all by machine, and though I really do prefer the hand-sewn finish on a binding, I have been so anxious to finish and use my quilts lately that I have been on a machine-binding tear!  As you might notice from the above pic, I commited the sin of mixing top and bobbin thread colors.  The back (bobbin) was green and the top was white.  This created no problems, and in fact, I LOVE how it turned out, so I will be doing it again and again!  You can also see that I am so anxious to finish that I start pressing the pedal down on the machine and get a less than straight line from time to time!  I believe my machine is partly to blame for this one.  It's very difficult to regulate speed with the foot pedal on my 1950's Singer, and so I sometimes get a less-than-smooth acceleration.  Well, I ordered some of this binding fabric (called Gipsy Glitter) along with a few others that appear on the quilt top last week, and thought it would lighten a quilt that felt a bit on the dark side (of the color spectrum, not The Force). 

 Here's my angel, just past her 19 month birthday, testing out our new picnic quilt.  Why didn't I notice that she had smushed up berries on her sandals BEFORE she jumped onto the quilt?  Oh well, it's gonna get dirty eventually!  That's one thing I am quickly learned as a parent- you can't own much of anything and expect to keep it nice and clean, because babies love to throw, chew, crumple, and drool on whatever looks new and nice.  So if you want to save it, put it on the highest shelf!  New and Nice are not so important to me now...cute and sweet and angelic have replaced them on the priority scale, and our little girl certainly tics all the boxes for us!

 

A proud "quilt dad" (copyright reserved, Quilt Dad) displaying quilt back and proof that he is indeed both a quilter and a dad.  Note baby carefully examining my stitches.  :)