The “It must be love” quilt
Look! Over there! Is that a flying pig? It must be, because Miss Lulu has gone and made a quilt.
Ok, most of my friends have heard me say “life’s too short to quilt”. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a good quilt - well the modern ones anyway - and I have much respect for the crafters who have the patience for all that piecing and pinning and the actual quilting. But I’ve just never had the urge to try that particular craft and I’ve tried most other needle crafts over the years.
So, what made me try it this time? Like I said above - It must be love. It was just before Valentine’s Day this year and the hubby and I were chilling out on the sofa. He was lamenting our lack of good sofa blankets and going to pull out one of the spare comforters (which I just find too large and cumbersome for the couch). I happened to be surfing Pinterest and saw a cool strip style quilt that kind of looked like those old stereo equalizer displays and the idea popped into my head to make him a quilt. Of course, as it was nearly Valentine’s day, the heart theme was obvious.
I looked for a design and found one that was almost right but the strips were going horizontal and I really pictured vertical strips for some reason. After some discussions with Ella over at our local quilt store “Me & Ewe”, she convinced me that I could totally design it myself and that I also did not need to rely on a jelly roll (those packs of pre-cut strips that are sold at a lot of quitting stores). She also helped me out with basic stuff like dimensions that would best utilize the fabric and how to calculate quantities.
We went through the store and picked a shortlist of fabrics for the hubby to choose from. I knew better than to just take him to the store and show him all the fabric available - he would have been way overwhelmed the poor dear:) He picked the charcoal and lime fabrics and also chose to have a non-contrast binding. I picked the back fabric as I wanted a little pretty in there but he had no objection to that.
The cutting and piecing actually took less time than I thought it would. It helped immensely that I did the piecing at our local Techshop that has a huge layout table in the textiles area. I was able to assemble all the vertical strips and lay them out in the right order then just pick them up one at a time to sew together. Then came the quilting part. I was planning on just stitching in the ditch down all those vertical seams and I could have just rolled it up as I went and put it through my regular machine But that seemed like such a chore when the Techsop also had a long-arm quilting machine:). The class to learn to use it was a bit expensive but I have plans for some quilted garments come next winter so I looked at it as an investment.
The quilter comes with a lot of pre-programmed designs as well as allowing you to freehand, so I did the vertical stitching freehand then added a simple heart design to the bottom right corner as a kind of signature.
One of the best things about using this machine was not having to pin all the layers together. Using this machine was definitely the way to go as all the quilting was done in a couple of hours. I dread to think what it would have been like to crawl around on the floor pin basting everything then wrestling it through the arm of my home machine. I know, whimpy of me, but sorry, not sorry. Binding was done that same night and I walked out with a ready to use quilt.
The hubby is really happy with it - even though he’s only getting his Valentine’s present in June - and that’s the main thing. Not sure if this means that life is now long enough to quilt but never say never I guess:)
Big thanks to Ella for helping out a quilting newbie. She even helped me out with the picture taking on this one. She’s on a ladder behind the wall here.
Now that’s customer service!