Monday, January 28, 2013

Quilt

I finally finished my first quilt! It isn't perfect, and it's definitely not square, but it held up through one gentle run through the washing machine, so that's a good start. Here it is all wrapped up and ready to be shipped!


This quilt was inspired by this beautiful quilt by craftyblossom. She makes such beautiful, simple quilts.

Here are some of many photos I took of the 160 squares I cut out... I was proud of just getting through that step!

And then sometimes we try to be artsy...


I embroidered a little note to my new cousin in pink, using stem stitch. I'm new to embroidery, but the Needle 'n' Thread website has a great tutorial for deciding which stitch to use for your lettering, and she has lots of other great tutorials on here as well.


Before I started I laid out the whole thing in powerpoint so that I was sure to like the final design. I'm not a very impromptu person when it comes to layout... or just about anything. Also, it is shocking how much calculation goes into making something look "random". (Leigh also helped quite a bit with this step!)


I also calculated my fabric cutting down to the last triangle so that I could have enough fabric. Stupidly, I bought it before doing deciding on the layout, so I had to make sure that I had enough of each color.

Also, I originally assumed that since I was using 1/4" seam allowances, I would have to cut out 4.5" squares, then cut them diagonally and be done with it... this is obviously not true, since there's that extra seam down the middle of the square. (I'm a great engineer, btw.)
After googling this (yes, I could have used trig, but I chose google instead), I found a quick method for calculating the needed size for half-square triangles using 1/4" seam allowances:
Finished Square Size + (2 x 1/4") + 3/8"
or
Finished Square Size + 7/8"

For most of the actual sewing of this quilt, I followed Quilt Class 101 on the Chasing Cottons blog. She provides multiple tutorials on different ways of doing each step. I was especially grateful for her binding tutorial, since that part was less intuitive than the others. I used the machine to sew one side down, and then hand stitched the other.



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