Finishing a Quilt

Years ago, when my husband graduated from college, his mother made him a quilt.  Not just any quilt, this was made from 5" squares cut from his old pairs of blue jeans. Tied with blue yarn, and lined on the back with flannel, this toasty warm quilt has always been our favorite.  This was the only quilt he took to college with him, and once we were married, it has always been on our bed. 

Alas, 30 years has taken it's toll on the quilt.  The back tore, and the batting began to fall out.  The back tore some more, and more lining fell out.  Last year, I finally bit the bullet and tore off the remains of the batting and backing.  I picked up a new backing - in the form of a flat sheet at Target, and more batting.

I spent a quick hour on the floor of the church, pinning the layers of the quilt together. 

And now, the time consuming part.  Tying a quilt goes faster than hand quilting, but it's still a time consuming proposition.  The yarn has to be cut, and each tie needs to be hand tied.  I am putting the new ties in the same spots that my Mother in Law had placed them.  Originally, I was attempting to tie the knots in the same direction, but I gave that up as a lost cause after 50 knots.  That was just too much detail work for me.

I began working on tying the quilt before Christmas, but I stopped about a week before and put it away for a while.  I pulled it back out again last night and started on it again.  I'm about a quarter of the way through re-tying it now. I'd like to think that I'll have this finished before the end of January so that I can start on daughter's quilt while it's still cold out and I don't mind having a ton of fabric on my lap!

Pre-Cut yarn, the needle and the quilt.

Getting ready to run the needle into the middle of the square.

One more knot!

Another one done - so much more to go!

Quilt Repair

My mother in law made this quilt for my husband when he graduated from high school.  It's a wonderfully warm and heavy quilt, made with pieces of old, worn out, blue jeans.  She cut 5 inch squares of denim, sewed them together, and then tied the quilt together with a skein of blue yarn that she picked up from K-Mart.  For years, this has been one of our favorite quilts!  It's really warm, and durable, and full of warm memories.

30 something years later, this poor quilt was showing the ravages of age.  The backing had been torn to shreds, and the batting had fallen out.  We haven't used it in a couple of years.  I finally have the time, so I'm working on refinishing the quilt.  I've pulled off the backing and the batting.  I had to cut off all of the blue ties.  Ye Gods, that was a more involved task than I thought it was going to be!  

After some serious consideration, we picked up a high quality black sheet from Target's Threshold collection, and I spent Tuesday afternoon pinning the quilt back together.  I had a large expanse of clean floor that I borrowed from my church.  I taped down the sheet, then I taped down the batting on top of the sheet, and then I placed the denim top on top of the sandwich.   I used basting pins to pin the layers together.  30 minutes after I started, I had a pinned quilt, ready to be pulled together!

I've been tying the layers as my mother in law did before me.  I realize now why she didn't want to help me fix the quilt.  Getting that needle through the layers of denim is a tough proposition!  I've been debating using pliers to pull the needle through! It's going to take me a while to get this thing tied together!

Once I take care of that, I have to figure out how to finish the edges.  This is where the only wear and tear on the denim can be seen.  The top and bottom edges had been turned in and sewed together.  If you look closely at the edge, you can see that the denim has torn and worn right along the edges.  So, while I tie the quilt together, I'm going to be contemplating how to finish off the edges of the quilt so that the whole thing will last another 30 years.  Your suggestions on binding the edges are more than welcome!  I certainly have no idea what I'm doing!

The Quilt is Almost Finished

Only 4 years after my original target date, and after almost 7 months of work, oldest child's quilt is almost finished.  It's a hand quilted masterpiece!  (I think)

This is what the inside of the quilt looks like:

The entire quilt is alternating of these 2 types of blocks.

Now, here's the problem.  I have yet to do the outside border.  It's plain brown, and I need to do something to that edge, but what?  It's a bigger border than I've done in the past, so I have to do something to keep the batting from shifting.  Considering the intricacy of the stitching on the inside, I feel I need to do something special on the outside.

The white stuff is the batting.  I need to trim that down.

But, one problem:  he's moving into his new apartment (out of state) next month.  Actually, in a little less than 3 weeks, he's moving away from home and into his own apartment.  I want to hand that quilt off to him when he moves in.

Once I pin up the edge, this is how much space I'll have left on the brown.

I was debating leaving it open, but I feel that I need to do a little bit more than just a line inside and outside of the edging.  (Where the safety pins are sitting.)  I'm going to use the machine to close up the quilt binding.  And I'm debating using it to sew a seam 1/4" inside the edging, all the way around.

So, keeping in mind that I'm hand quilting the outside edge, and that he's moving into his apartment in a little less than 3 weeks, what would you suggest for the brown border?

Making a Quilt a Quilt

After years of procrastinating, I finally finished piecing oldest child's quilt, pinned it with the batting and backing, and now I'm getting ready to quilt it!  Oldest child is an Eagle Scout.  With this thought in mind, I purchased the fabric for a Boy Scout Quilt online at the Fat Quarter Shop.  (No affiliate link here, I just wanted to let you know where I found the fabric!) 

The pattern included with the fabric was easy to follow.  A four square alternated with a large block.  Everything is joined together with green strips.  This begs the question - Why did I procrastinate so much?

I hand quilt what I make, so I've got to get this mounted into a quilting hoop.  My hoop is big.  I found it about 30 years ago, and I adore it!  The hoop is easy to use, and it screws tightly together to hold the fabric in place.  I've seen floor mounted hoops, but I like this one because it is portable.  I'm not tied down to one location with this hoop.

My quilting hoop.  You see that big wood block on the upper left corner?  That's got the screw and wing nut, where I tighten the hoop once I've placed it securely over the fabric.

A view of the squares.  The blanket is not yet mounted on the hoop.

In the hoop, I've tightened the wing nut to hold the fabric in place.

This is a crucial step.  I pull the fabric from the outside of the hoop.  The fabric needs to be tight so that the stitches and fabric are even and there are no fabric puckers.

Fully loaded and ready to begin!  I'll pull the loose threads off before I begin quilting.  The safety pins hold the layers of fabric together.  As I quilt, I'll remove the safety pins from the area where I am working.

I've had people ask me before how to quilt.  I'll tell you what my husband's grandmother told me when she taught me how to quilt:  You just go up and down and up and down and keep on going until you're done!

Seriously, you just make a series of small stitches.  If you've ever cross stitched or embroidered, you can quilt.

For this quilt, I'm going to outline the big squares, in the green lattice work.  Inside of each square, I'm going to quilt diamonds- much like I did with middle child's t-shirt quilt, only these are smaller squares, so there will be fewer diamonds.  I'll post pictures of the quilting itself in a couple of weeks.

I feel like I should do "something" else in the green lattice work, but I'm not certain what I'll do.  I'll have to outline a few squares first and see how I like this before I decide.

Christmas Quilt

The quilt!  (Okay, wall hanging), edges cut and ready to close.

Several years ago, I bought a lovely Christmas Quilt panel that was designed by one of my favorite artists- Laurel Burch.  I bought a pair of cat earrings that she had made about 25 years ago, and I've been an avid fan of her work since then.  

I found the material at a great little quilt shop, Patches Quilting, a locally owned and operated business.  You know, I'm all about supporting local businesses whenever and wherever I can.  

Anyway, I bought the fabric panel, but neglected to buy anything to back it with at the time.  

This past November, I ventured back to Patches and found a fabulous fabric- solid black with small gold dots that would pair well with the fabric.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I laid pinned the fabrics and batting together, and began quilting.

I know that there are sewing machines out there that quilt, but for right now, I wanted to hand quilt this piece.  I hand quilted the baby blankets for all of the children, and I plan to hand quilt the blankets that I am giving them for graduation.

I finished the quilting earlier this week.  Today, I cut the edges down so that I can sew the edges closed.  I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to close the edges with quilt binding, or if I'm going to turn the edges in and sew them together.  I'm still not certain which one I'll do, but I do have a month or so to decide.

In order to cut the edges, I used a straight edge metal ruler and my fabric scissors.  The ruler itself is the width that I want for the border, so it was a perfect match.  I lined up one edge of the ruler against the bottom edge of the red band that surrounds the quilt pattern and cut evenly.

Edge of quilt, straight edge, and scissors.

One note about fabric scissors - dedicate one pair to fabric, and only to fabric.  The scissors need to be sharp and cutting anything else with your scissors - paper, cardboard, tape, will dull the scissors and they will pull the threads at the edge of the fabric and cause some serious fraying of your very expensive fabric, and even more lovingly quilted materials! I've had my scissors for longer than I've been married.  When the kids were born and I quit doing small crafty work, quilting, etc, I locked my sewing scissors up (along with my straight edge ruler, rotary cutter, and needles) into a box with a lock and several packets of silica gel to prevent rusting.  Everything went up on a top shelf.  When I broke into the sewing stuff again 5 years ago, everything was in perfect condition and I didn't have to purchase new supplies.

The very nice thing about this fabric is that the design is already woven into the fabric.  There was no piecing or sewing of small parts.  The only thing I did was to hand quilt it- I traced around the outlines of each of the designs, as well as outlined the borders on the quilt.

Now that I'm looking a little bit more at this quilt, I'm leaning towards closing the edges with quilt binding.

A close up of the bird tree- center panel.

The bird ornament.

More T Shirt Quilt

These are pictures of the black on black squares.

As of this morning, all of the quilting on the right hand side of the quilt is finished! I have the left edge, and two black squares bordering the black edge left to finish!  I might, just might, have this finished in time for Christmas!

I decided to make straight lines, diagonally across the squares.  I could use a fabric marker to show me where to stitch, but since I don't have one on hand, and I don't want to spend any more money than I have to, I'm following along the edge of a ruler.

Diagonal rows.  When they make a quilt, the Amish deliberately make a mistake which is called "The Fear of God".  Legend has it that they believe that only God is perfect, so they deliberately make mistakes.  Look at my quilting, and you'll see a lot of that!  The rows are mostly straight, and mostly go in the same direction!  I'm not willing to pull quilt stitches out- my stitches tend to be small enough that I worry I will damage the fabric if I do pull anything out.  Instead, my interesting lines will be caught for everyone to see - forever....

Starting the cross rows back to male a diamond pattern.  If you look closely at the bottom left corner of the block, you should be able to see two completed rows of diamonds.

More finished block.  Each black block is covered in a diamond grid, much like this.  (Some are a little more unique than others!!)

And that's all.  I estimate that I have about 2 weeks worth of quilting left before I move onto finishing up the edges.  That will be an entirely new challenge!