Tag: quilt as you go

  • A Year Late

    I started this quilt back in August of last year. It was meant to be a wedding gift for my son Jarod and his then-fiancée Aubrey, who got married in October. I cut the first squares with plenty of time to spare, or so I thought. Life kept getting in the way.

    I finally got it finished last week, and I shipped it to them this morning. It’ll get there before their first anniversary, and before the cold weather hits up there. They live in North Dakota.

    It’s a quilt-as-you-go pattern in their favorite colors. Fall/Autumn. Because it was quilt as you go I didn’t need to do a whole lot of quilting. Just enough to attach the top to the back. So I just did around the shapes about a half inch out from the seams.

    The binding is scrappy, made from a mix of the leftover fabrics, but I wanted it balanced instead of totally random, so I enlisted the help of my brother Dave who did the math to make sure everything lined up right.

    It was a hilarious two hour phone call trying to explain to my brother what a binding was, why I needed a binding, what shape the fabrics were going to be, and why the black fabric wasn’t gonna be on the corners. I laughed so hard. It was so fun.

    Because of his efforts to learn about quilting and the math he put into it, I added a line to the label:

    Quilt math by Uncle Dave.

    Now that’ll be part of the quilt for as long as it exists. Seems only fair, since I definitely wasn’t doing that math myself.

    So — a year late, but it’s done, and I absolutely love it!

    Quilt top. I love these colors. And I love how the piecing came out.
    View of binding against the back. Not the greatest idea to show a black quilt on a black quilt. But you get the idea.
  • Sewing Machine Update

    Good news—my sewing machine is back in working order! 🎉

    But here comes the next problem… I’ve got just one more block left, and I’m completely out of batting. Since this is quilt-as-you-go, I sew the fabric directly onto a batting square for each block. I thought I cut enough, but apparently I can’t count. 🤦 So now I’ll have to dig around for something else to use—because I’m definitely not buying a whole bag of batting just for one block!

    And if that wasn’t enough, I almost had another mess with fabric too. After cutting everything, I was left with just one lonely strip. 😅