My First Feature!

Heather from Modern Day Quilts contacted me the other day and said she would like to feature my Drunk Love Quilt on her blog. I was so excited!! At lot of love was put into this quilt by me and my virtual quilting bee friends for my stepson.

None of my work has ever been featured before so I'm really excited and honoured to tell you the truth! Thanks Heather!! You've really made my day!

Drunk Love Quilt - Finished!

Yeh! It's finished! I'm so happy with how it came out and boy, did I learn a few lessons along the way! Here it is this morning pre-washed in the snow. I couldn't wait to take a picture of the finished product:)

As I was getting it ready to be washed, Miss G had to "jump" all over it and insisted I take a picture of her so this is for her...

Where to start with all of the "lessons" I learned or "things to be considered"....

Concentric Square Quilting

I started off with quilting these squares working from the centre of the block and outwards. My biggest mistake was in not rolling my quilt tightly enough while quilting and maneuvering it. I found I was stuffing the quilt through the arm of my machine and it was take an excessive amount of time to quilt each block with all the twisting and turning - especially working from inside the square and outwards. What I realized after struggling with over half of my blocks in this manner was that if you rolled your quilt tightly it was a lot easier to pass it through the arm of the machine. Duh! It seems obvious but I think it's worth repeating for those of us out there who have done the same thing!
Once I started rolling it more tightly, it became a lot easier to quilt the actual blocks. The second thing I changed was that I began to quilt from the outside of the block and worked my way inward. I preferred this method much more as it was easier to maneuver around the block at first and you could envision your overall concentric square quilting (hope that makes sense). I found I started to not quilt as densely and left the centre block (especially if it was a big square) unquilted so that the pop of colour was left untouched and you didn't see a bunch of white thread. Again, just a matter of personal taste, not necessarily a right or wrong thing.

I wished that when I began quilting it I had left some of the centre blocks untouched.
Having said that there are some blocks that I think really look cool from the back - ones that were densely quilted.

I also think it's important to consider what effect you're wanting to achieve in terms of the concentric square quilting. I decided not to free motion the squares and used my walking foot so that I could achieve a more straight line effect. One is not better than the other - again just a question of personal taste. Since I decided on straight quilting lines, I wish on some of my initial blocks that I quilted parallel to the seam lines. When I look at some of the first blocks I quilted, my eyes are distracted by the quilting instead of some of the last blocks I quilted.
Wow, I must sound really picky:) Don't get me wrong! These are just some of the things I felt that next time I wanted to think about first before I tackle concentric square quilting again. (I do have another drunk love quilt in the making...)

Machine Binding Tips

My two "go to" tutorials for bindings are CrazyMomQuilts and RedPepperQuilts
Rita at RedPepperQuilts actually talks about not only bindings, but tackling machine bindings. I too am not a fan of sewing anything by hand. That's probably taboo of me to say (haha) since I know a lot of you enjoy the process of sitting down and hand sewing a binding. I admire you! I have tried both methods of first attaching the binding to the back and machine stitching the binding to the front and also attaching to the binding to the front and stitching in the ditch to attach the binding to the back (Rita at RedPepperQuilts' method). I thought I would try Rita's method for this quilt and I love the result! I used my Accuquilt Go Fabric Cutter to cut out the 2.5 inch strips (my favourite is 2 1/4 strips but heh, I have the cutter and it's nice and convenient). Once I had my binding strips attached using Amanda's method
I then pressed them in half and using a 1/4 inch seam, attached the strips to the FRONT of my quilt. Once I ironed this, I then pinned the back so that the fold of the strip just barely overlapped the sewing line that you had just sewn. I flipped it back to the front as Rita suggests and stitched in the ditch along the binding. Now, I have to say there were definitely some spots that I didn't always catch by stitching in the ditch so I had to go back and attach....but that was just a matter of paying attention to how I pinned it. I found that at first I was folding back the binding to much and then once I stitched in the ditch, the sewing line was almost in the middle of my binding and not at the outside edge. I ripped this out, made sure that I didn't over fold my binding to the back and voila, a much better result!

The corner were sometimes tricky but I know that once I'm able to practice a bit more, they will become easier. The trick to corners are to pin, pin, pin.

Piecing the Back
Can anyone say....make sure your back is big enough before you pin and quilt! Sure, I know this is quilting 101, but I ignored that little voice inside my head that said, I think it might be a little too small and proceeded anyway! Ah...those voices are there for a reason aren't they!! haha While I didn't do this before on any of my other quilts, I did on this one - and let me tell you what a pain in the you know what it was to correct. I won't bore you any longer with this story...enough said:) I'm happy to say that after all of that correcting, the end result is still really nice and you can't tell as I simply added a few extra seams here and there of the same fabric so it's pretty continuous! Lucky!!

Phew....now I'm done! Hope these little tidbits were in some small way helpful to any of you out there. I guess each quilt is a journey!
I want to say a big "THANK YOU" to all of the ladies from the Pieced Together Quilting Bee 2 who helped me to make blocks for this quilt! Without them, there would be no Drunk Love quilt!!
I can't wait to give it to my stepson tonight!!

Dilemma...need your input!

Remember this quilt?

Notice the leaves on the ground? That's how long it's been since I've tackled the quilting on it!! It was supposed to be given to my stepson as a present for him LAST YEAR and it still isn't completed! Now, to be fair, I have been busy with having another baby and all, but I can't hide behind all of my excuses anymore:) Ahemmmm..(embaressed look on my face)

I'll be totally honest, I have been avoiding it! The quilting process is driving me crazy and I've run into a few problems! I'm turning to all of you and the Workshop in Process participants (over at NaptimeQuilter) for input.

I'm having a heck of a time quilting it because doing concentric squares on my machine is a killer! I'm having to stuff the whole quilt through the arm with each turn of a square...it ends up taking me way too much time. I feel it's a completely daunting task. I can't imagine having to still do another 15 squares of this quilt! At this rate, it will be a present for my stepson next year! Ahh...

Here is a pic of the quilting:

Now, I have to say, I really like the look of this particular square but they're not all like this one.

I guess the issue I have is that if it's supposed to be linear it should look that way....

Another issue is the back. I must have pinned it a bit off. I know I could still fix it by adding a few extra rows on the side and bottom but I'm afraid when I finally square it up before adding the binding, it's going to look funny.

I have found the name of a woman who has a long arm machine that I could rent. I have to say I'm seriously tempted to rip out all of my quilting and just stipple it. That's one solution.

Another thing I've considered is to rip out the quilting and do free form concentric squares a la Malka Dubrawsky (stitchindye.blogspot.com). Here is an example from the cover of her book (bottom right):

I bought one of those Heras Quilt Markers and thought I would give it a go before I do anything rash - like ripping out the entire quilt. If that works, I could always free form my squares following the marks giving the look of using a walking foot (hope that makes sense).

So, what do you think? I'm leaning towards the Heras marker route first....ripping it out, fixing the back and freeform square quilting would be my second option. Of course the thought of all of that seam ripping makes me cringe and then I'm wondering if ripping it out, will you see the old marks? Would love to hear your thoughts!!!

Pics of Concentric Square Quilting

Concentric Square Quilting

I'm finally in the process of quilting my stepson's Drunk Love style quilt aka Denyse Schmidt. I knew I wanted the quilting to be concentric squares as it highlights the style of the quilt/blocks. I never imagined how much a "pain in the you know what" it would be! Stuffing your quilt through your machine at every turn of the square is difficult and time consuming. Again, love the effect but unless you're quilting with a long arm, it can take some time and a whole lot of patience to complete this on a home machine. I think if it were a baby quilt, it would be a lot easier! Maybe it's just that I'm a bit rushed as I'm about to give birth in two weeks and the patience factor has gone out the window:) Could be! I almost stopped and started stippling but I didn't - I'm going to stick with it! I like to try new things and I want it to look good.

Any tips/thoughts on how you quilt in concentric squares would be appreciated:) I'll post some pictures later today!