King Size Quilt pt.3
How I spent my holidays
It's been a little over a year since I started on the Great Quilting Experiment. I started off in November of 2012 with an idea to create a quilt and managed to feel pretty good about my very first completed block.
Not long after my first block, my trusty little beginner's Singer died a grindy, noisy death and I started looking around for a replacement. I dropped into a sewing/craft store around the corner, KW Sewing Machines, and had a great chat with one of the saleswomen there. I told her my level of experience, and where I wanted to go with my sewing and she introduced me to one of the coolest pieces of technology I've ever been fortunate enough to meet - the Janome 2030 QC.
By March of that year I'd completed about half of the 30 blocks needed for my king-size quilt (what was I thinking for my first quilt?!).
I made 36 but decided to only use 30 of the 12" blocks because I'd neglected to account for the sashing and cornerstones when doing the math for a standard king size blanket.
Once I had the front finished, I took a break for a few months to bide my time till Boxing Day after Christmas so that I could get the batting and backing I needed to finish the quilt. Sure enough, there were sales all over the place and I managed to pick up 3 meters of Warm and Natural cotton batting and 3 meters of wide fabric for my backing. As soon as I had all my supplies, I immediately got to work.
Safety pins are cool and all, but this stuff is a lifesaver!
I read a tip online that the easiest, quickest way to secure the layers of a quilt was a good temporary adhesive crafting spray. They don't gum up needles and the spray itself washes out in a normal wash cycle once your project is finished.
By the end of this project I'd used these gloves so much that the fingertips in the first two fingers of both gloves were worn completely through!
For working with large projects, these gloves are a MUST HAVE.
I ran out of thread pretty quickly at this stage (I only had two spools of 250 yards), so when I ran to the fabric store to get 3 more spools (which still might not be enough - I must be out of my mind), I spotted these spiffy Fons & Porter Machine Quilting Gloves designed to grip fabric easier and to reduce tension in the neck and hands when sewing. They look cheesy, but they're fantastic - I highly recommend getting some of these if you do a lot of machine quilting.
Can we just take a moment to show some love for the walking foot!
All in all, I'm very pleased with how the quilt is coming along and I can hardly believe it's been such a long work in progress. It's been a very lovely holiday this Winter working on this final stage of the project.
coffee, quilting and Netflix - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to me!
What I have left will probably take some time to wrap up, and then I get to try my hand at binding this bad boy. Stay tuned for updates as I move into the next phase (and I continue to question my sanity).
