The Quilt that just kept growing!
To my delight I received an inquiry about a custom quilt via Etsy in mid January for a 3 year old little girl graduating to a big girl bed. The mother of this little girl didn’t exactly know what she wanted so I sent her some pictures of quilts I did and an idea I worked up on EQ6 that I thought of when I was reading her request. She liked the sampler I did for my son in 2001 ( my first ever quilt). This is a combination of the EQ6 idea and a more advanced sampler. So we moved onto the details like the price and I told her exactly what she would be getting, when I could start and how long it would take. She was happy with the details so she made the deposit and we were set!
A blessing in disguise:
You know when you set time aside for something important and suddenly it all goes to hell?
So many things happened with a family emergency, my mother suddenly needing all of my blessed time, and then I got very ill during the week I was supposed to start this project! Thank goodness I purchased the materials and started 3 days early!
With having a lot of down time when I couldn’t even stand, I began embroidering the blocks to dress them up. I hadn’t intended on this in the beginning but once I got started, I couldn’t stop!
I kept adding the blocks to the design wall and adding embroidery to the new ones. I took 2 out that just were not working and made new ones. Then it was finally time to make all of the border blocks known as Wacky Log Cabins. Those were time consuming because I just *had* to fussy cut from all sorts of fabrics. I went through so much fabric!
Then the borders: The border I planned wasn’t as thrilling in real life. And when I fit the quilt top on a twin bed it seemed too small. It was based on the standard twin size for Warm and Natural batting. I’m sure this mom intended for more of an over hang on the sides of the bed. So I had to buy more fabric to make wider borders. I had queen sized batting I already purchased on sale- which was the normal price for twin size anyway.
So I changed my quilting design in the border using half circles over lapping. This made a very pretty scalloped effect. Now I couldn’t use straight edges! I just had to echo the quilting for the edge of the quilt. Right? This was so much easier than I thought. I only did curvy edges once many years ago before I knew what I know now about bias binding! It was challenging by machine but a dream to hand stitch down.
This was a quilt I was meant to make. Everything went perfectly as far as technical difficulties usually go. I had to do some repeats and some seam ripping but not so much. But the quilt stayed amazingly square and I had not one single machine issue. Every quilt I have ever done has given me a headache with machine tantrums. I did stop to clean it out a lot though. There was a lot of lint due to using a flannel backing.
In the end, this quilt is one of my loudest and prettiest. I am delivering it tomorrow, a few days late. I kept in contact with the client through the whole project with pictures and when she found out I was sick, she told me to take my time. I’m a few days late but her response to my note last night about the quilt being almost ready was : Holy cow! You were supposed to be taking it easy!
I’m so lucky I get to do what I love.
P.S. Keep in touch with me on Facebook! b.z.threads
March 19th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
The top one reminds me a bit of the work by Mary Englebert (brit? Can never remember her name properly.) She may have used a different medium, but the feeling is very similar!
March 25th, 2013 at 1:00 pm
I know who you mean! Yes, you got her name right. She did use a lot of color with black and white. I love that kind of look too. In fact, I may have been influenced by her. I used to admire her art when it was new- more than 20 years ago I think! I haven’t thought of her art in a very long time. Cool observation!
March 29th, 2013 at 7:09 am
Thank you for the sensible critique. Me and my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research about this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more from this post. I am very glad to see such magnificent info being shared freely out there.
April 2nd, 2013 at 12:14 pm
I’m glad you appreciated it. I discovered just how little people know about the involvement in putting a quilt together. It’s one of those things that requires some flexibility to make changes where necessary to achieve a good outcome as opposed to just OK. So, are you planning to make a quilt?