My second favorite handmade present this Christmas was a quilt for my mom.
Are you loving the artful by-the-tree photos? Yes, I am a total dork. (My spellcheck wanted to change it to fork, apparently my spellcheck did not grow up in the 80's like me)
Anywhoo, back to the quilt. I don't remember what possessed me to start a quilt for my mom about a month before Christmas, but I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. My log cabin pillows had turned out cute and I was feeling confident.
The top was pieced out of a solid cream jelly roll + a varied print jelly roll. (Look here if you have no idea what I'm talking about)
I found a clever little book at Barnes & Noble that is ALL jelly roll quilts and picked Lake Cabin because it seemed straight forward. I made it even easier by not rotating the blocks and skipping the star shapes in the corners.
One of the coolest things about jelly rolls is that the fabrics are all coordinated for you without having to spend hours wandering around the fabric store. I put together 20 squares for five rows of four blocks and they were all different.
After I used the cream strips to fasten the blocks together, I took a few little scraps to Joanne Fabrics and managed to find TWO matching fabrics for backing and binding.
I used the red check for the backing, but I didn't take a picture.
There was not time to hand quilt and the local quilt shop had a waiting list for their machine quilting service, so I bit the bullet and tackled it myself.
To keep it simple, I decided to just quilt diagonal lines. I was worried about marking the quilt top, so I used masking tape as a guide instead. It took forever to put on but it was effective.
To quilt on a machine you have to roll up the part you aren't sewing so it will fit in the machine. It's awkward but I got better as I went. Despite the tape, some of my lines were a little wonky. I took a couple of the worst ones out and redid them, but then I decided I just had to get it done. Perfect being the enemy of good and all that jazz.
My mom sounded happy with it when we talked on Christmas but I was little worried when she said she hadn't decided how to "display" it. I really just wanted her to use it watching TV. Will be interesting to see if is in evidence the next time I get back to Yuma.
In the meantime, I took advantage of the after-Christmas sales.
More jelly roll strips!!
Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
