"crazy quilt" style, adding pieces as you go. To be truly a crazy quilt there would be much more embroidery along all the seams.
Perhaps it was all the nervous energy from anticipating my visitors' arrival. Perhaps it was a little left over procrastinating the last bits of cleaning the apartment. Perhaps it really was the fact that there were a couple of extraneous holes in my wall from trying to put up the final curtain rod (and not knowing there would be sheet metal to block my progress) and I just could not get them out of my mind.
I made a mini-quilt yesterday and I love it! It is mostly scraps from my tool rolls which means heavy canvas and this quilt is, like a good garlic, heavy for its size.
Ian thought it looked right at home, forgetting all about the unsightly holes behind it!
Something on this crowded wall is a fresh addition!
When I originally wrote this goal, I intended to make a bed sized quilt. Often, when I try something out, I'm jumping in all the way.
So maybe it's bits of wisdom surfacing, or maybe I was just enthralled with my new book Whip Up: Mini Quilts. That this time, I started small. (Turns out Mini-quilts is Book no. 14/52, I'm also reading Princess Bride at bedtime so that's 15/52)
Well, I actually started huge like normal:
Gnomes become diamonds become cubes become quilt and... go! Maybe this was too ambitious for my first quilt.It will take hundreds of diamonds.
I'm still working on the Gnome falling blocks quilt. It is going to take a long time because it is English paper piecing here's a video from youtube about it:
My new book has mini-quilt projects, a great way to use up scraps it says, and small projects to learn the basics of quilting. I'm actually unimpressed with the instructions so far. There are portions that I have not understood at all, and luckily, we live in the future, so I can just go to youtube. (I started the other quilt from another book I have and wish I had watched that video first, it answered a lot of questions I had and have just sort of been winging.)
A mini-quilt is also great for instant gratification! In spare time over three days I have made an entire (mini) quilt! So with no further ado, I stamp Goal 011--Make a quilt as ACCOMPLISHED! This was a very good lesson for me in how goals change. I wrote the goal with that big quilt in mind, yet after a while I realized that the point of my goal was not to end up with a blanket, but to learn basic quilting. With that clarified I could take on a smaller project and still fulfill my goal.
Here is the photo essay:
The project is a photo-quilt, I picked an image from a trip to Mexico. I'm just out of frame making shadow figures on the wall of my Grandpa's wood workshop. It is printed on ink-jet printable cotton! Cool huh!
All three columns are sewn! See the backside, all those pretty seams pressed open.
Sewing the columns together to make the top of the quilt. This mini-quilt was almost all machine sewn.
Here is the back of the top being altogether. My squares ended up a little wonky. I need to work on that.
Just a close up of the backside. I like how the back looks.
The finished front. I'm impressed, all but one of my corner seams lined up between the photo and its neighbors.
My mini quilt is for hanging so I used heavy iron-on stabilizer on the backing fabric so it will hang straight.
The step I didn't understand from the book was applying the binding. YouTube to the rescue! Also in the upper corner are Ian's sketches for the quilting. You're supposed to do that before you attach the binding. . . which I know now.
Close up of Ian's sketches for the quilting. I really wanted to do the last one, but curves are too difficult at my level. Can you tell which one I chose?
The finished quilt. Two bits of ribbon are sewn to the top for hanging. It's just a temporary stop here on my wall, I plan to give this quilt to my mom.
