Completed brown-and-gold lap quilt

[via_ostiense]

I've finished the brown-and-gold lap quilt!





Yesterday, troisroyaumes and her mother had bluerabbit, S., and myself over for an amazing dinner celebrating 추석 (harvest moon festival) and troisroyaumes' birthday, and while I was slipstitching the edge shut, someone asked if the quilt was done. I said no, one more side needed to be stitched, and then unfolded it to do the next side, and found out that actually, all four border edges were done! Yay!

The pattern is from a book on quilt block patterns; you can see that the seams rarely align, and many of the patches are of different sizes (the small squares are supposed to be the same size; the big squares are supposed to be the same size; and the rectangles are supposed to be the same size), so I machine-quilted more or less along the vertical and horizontal seam lines, instead of diagonally across the square patches, as the original pattern called for. The fabric came from the super discounted bolt-end section at the fabric store, and luckily, I found some fabrics that were complementary to each other. I'm excited to have finally finished this quilt, and working on it helped me figure out my tastes and come up with designs for new projects--browns and golds and traditional American quilt patterns are all well and good, but I'm envisioning a large quilt with boldly contrasting colors and enormous, asymmetrical, sharp-angled patches for my next quilt. :D

Out of curiosity, do any of y'all have tips on how to make patches the same size and neatly slipstitch? My slipstitches pucker the border and resemble tiny, widely spaced whip stitches rather than being invisible. As for the patches, I measured and cut them with a rotary cutter, ruler, and cutting mat, but they're still irregular.

Comments

[lirren]

What a fun quilt! I love that!

[via_ostiense]

Thank you!

[teapot_rabbit]

That's a nice autumnal color combination. :)

Getting seams to line up when quilting is all about being obsessively precise. Sounds like you're well on your way with your cutting. When cutting squares from strips I stop frequently to make double-sure the cuts are still all 90 degrees. Usually after 4 or 5 cuts one edge is no longer perfectly perpendicular.

Also make sure your seams are all exactly 1/4 inch. (That's usually to the presser-foot edge.) This is where I run into problems most, not with the cutting aspect. If you're off even 1/16 of an inch, it can add up really fast. My mother and I once made a quilt on two different machines, and even though we were both being super-careful, the blocks ended up different sizes. It was mildly stressful.

As for slip stitching... ummm... this is going to be hard to explain in words. It sounds like you might be leaving too much room between your stitches. This looks like a pretty good tutorial on slipstitching. (Though the first few steps aren't applicable to quilt binding.) Notice in particular that the points where the needle leaves one side of the fabric and enters the other are directly above each other.

Good luck with your next quilt! It's addictive and fun. ^_^

[via_ostiense]

Thank you for the tips! That tutorial is excellent, and, um, it turns out I was doing the slip stitch incorrectly. Rather than inserting the needle at the crease line, I was putting it in just outside of the crease line, which made the stitches more visible. I'm forewarned and forearmed for the next quilt, though. :)

[vass]

It's beautiful!

[via_ostiense]

Thank you!

[piscinarii]

Looks good!

[via_ostiense]

Thank you! I'm amazed at how light it is--the only other quilt I've made has a fleece blanket inside it for batting, and this quilt has a cotton-poly blend batting. It's so soft!