Two down

It's not often I finish two largish quilts in one week. I wasn't chained to the sewing machine during that vacation week; things just seemed to go well.

This particular quilt, however, serves as a cautionary tale for me. It was meant as a comfort quilt for a friend; he died before it was completed, in fact, the morning after I finally finished the bulk of the quilting. The story in pictures:

The full, completed quilt. It comes in at just under twin size, I believe - bigger than usual for a lap quilt. The plaid fabrics are woven and brushed homespuns - wonderful to look at, soft to feel, but nasty and ravel-y to work with, depending on how tight the weave of the particular fabric. The brown isn't a solid; there is a black pattern on it (click to enlarge).



This is where the real problems began. This quilting motif is essentially an all over maze - you wander here and there, turning sharp corners, creating a maze effect. After testing it on some scrap fabric/batting, I went ahead and quilted one entire vertical column this way.

Unfortunately, the wool batting - which is a dream to hand quilt - didn't take so well to the machine quilting and abrupt changes of direction. In spite of being both spray basted and pinned, the top insisted on shifting all over the place, leaving bunches and puckers. That wouldn't do.

The quilt then sat for close to nine months, waiting for inspiration on exactly how to quilt the remainder, and the energy to pick out all those tiny stitches (never fun, especially since you need to be very, very careful not to rip the quilt itself).



Lack of inspiration eventually led to a return to basics, and an all-over puzzle piece quilting. The quilt sandwich shifted less, since there were no abrupt directional changes, and it is a pattern I've used many times before.



Once that was decided, the actual quilting went very swiftly. Thanks to my habit of making the binding first, I didn't need to stop to cut and piece before sewing on that last step. Happy it is finally done.