Sometime last year I did a quick and easy throw quilt from Tula Pink’s Elizabeth fabrics and very large rectangle snowball blocks. No pictures or write up yet though, sorry.
But! The triangle bits cut off the corners were plentiful and quite large. Enough to make a baby quilt for sure. I sewed up each corner as I cut them off – working on two quilts at once – and played around a bit with layout.
Pinwheels are pretty straightforward, so to liven up the boredom, I also added sashing with cornerstone blocks from more scraps. The white sashing itself was from my white scrap bin too.
I swear, this fabric is going to live on forever… I also have a runner from more scraps from the same project.
I posted a picture of the completed top and Kathy contacted me to claim it for her granddaughter. Fun! Anything for a fellow member of the cool grandma club.
For the quilting, I wanted it to be nice and custom and pretty and basically what I call quilting the heck out of it. But first, I stitched in the ditch around each block. Technically I could have left it there, it was secure enough. But you know me!
I wanted to challenge myself as well, and time it so I could see how long it took for me to quilt when focused.
The sashing has back and forth lines, sometimes called switchbacks.
Each cornerstone has “bumps” – a curved line that goes from corner to corner.
The pinwheels also have bumps in each triangle, but with them all together almost form a flower. It only took a couple of blocks to figure out the best way to travel with the least amount of back tracking.
Did I mention I hate breaking threads? Most of the quilting here is done all in one go, save for bobbin changes.
The small border around the outside, same width as the sashing, is done in half feather bumps, just to soften the look a bit. I had trimmed the quit after the first step of straight quilting, and by the time I got to the borders was kicking myself. Some places I was holding on with my fingertips!
Super happy with those corner turns too.
So, time spent doing the initial straight quilting was 20 minutes. I stopped for lunch, swapped out the walking foot for the FMQ foot and went at it, knowing what to do for each section. I quilt fast and at top speed. Time spent for the custom work? An hour and a half. Maybe an hour and 20 mins.
Then it was on to the fabric choices for binding. I sent Kathy a picture with options.
She picked the green stripes. Perfect! I cut it on the bias, because bias striping is always a great choice.
The finished quilt.
All this puckered crinkly goodness is after washing. It already looks like a family heirloom!
Have a look at the back.
When the quilt arrived at Kathy’s place she said the same thing my mom always says. “The pictures don’t do it justice!” 😀
