It's the Blogger's Quilt Festival again (as if you haven't noticed all the wonderful quilts popping up)! Click on the button below to see some awesome quilts.
The quilt I'm entering into the festival this year is one that I just finished, yesterday. I pushed to get it done in time and the last bit of finishing went much faster than I thought it would.
This is our new bed quilt. It is done in a Quilt-As-You-Go method and made from scraps of fabric. It's a great way to use up extra scraps!
It measures 91" x 104". Each block is 13" square. There are 56 blocks, 7 blocks by 8 blocks.
I began the quilt in Spring 2010 and it took two years to complete. I did have some help from the girls in my Wonky Quilt Bee to finish up 10 blocks. They really helped me "complete" the last stretch.
I genearlly followed this tutorial from Sew, Take a Hike. I spaced my lines about 3/8" apart and increased my stitch length to 3.5 most of the time. Of course, each block is unique and I developed my technique over the years, so the early blocks are a bit different.
This quilt contains bits and pieces of past projects. I love being reminded of all the wonderful fabrics I've used over the past few years of quilting in one place.
This is by far the largest quilt I have made. It is also the most time-consuming. Partly because it was large, but also because of the technique. It's basically quilted twice.
I quilted each square and then assembled the top to be 7 squares by 8 squares. I then made my sandwich with the back and an additional layer of batting. So, there are essentially two pieces of batting. I wanted to add a little more body to the quilt as it was going on our bed. I also wanted the back to have a bit more stability. Other than being a pain to finish with my machine, it worked out well. Since the quilt is so large, it was difficult to wrangle through my machine. I kept splitting needles. I think I went though five needles.
I quilted the sandwich by stitching in the ditch around each 13" square, each center square and around another "square" in the somewhere in the middle of each block. I'm not normally one for stitching in the ditch, but because the quilting was already done, I didn't want to detract from it with more quilting. The weight of the quilt preventing me from making even, straight stitches. It's not the best quilting job, but most of it is hidden by the quilt-as-you-go lines.
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