School this year has been a lot of work for me. I don't want to go into it much but I've been asked to teach a second subject area alongside Japanese, without any additional time for planning or actual teaching. It's been a bit rough to say the least. When I got to the end of term and holidays started, I really needed to switch off.
So I spontaneously decided to make Sophie a quilt.
She's kind of needed one for a little while now, since the one I made for her back in 2013 is only a single. While it does still fit, Sophie is the type of sleeper who likes to get a bit tangled up, and it wasn't cutting it. She'd found the Queen Quilt that I'd made for Steve and I (pre kids - way back in 2009!) and had claimed it as her own. Which was great for her, because she could roll around, wrap up and sleep peacefully, but not great for Steve and I who were now without a quilt.
I'd seen a video pop up on YouTube of a "Floating Lanterns" quilt that seemed pretty easy to replicate. I dug through my fabric stash and pulled out some ideas that I thought Sophie would like, and then took Rachel on a trip to Spotlight to get the plain colour for the sashing/background and she helped me pick out a few more colours to compliment things.
Sophie did have a look over the fabric and veto some, but was pretty happy with most of them, so I got to work. Cutting hundreds of squares and rectangles to sew. Can't say I love this part of the quilting process, especially when it's so reliant on doing the maths right and then counting correctly as you go. I was some squares and rectangles short when it came to sewing, but when I did cut more squares and sewed them in, I found I had excess blocks. Oh well!
The above photo is Sophie lying next to what I think will be the layout and me trying to decide if it's going to come out long enough for her. I was working on roughly double bed measurements but it didn't seem wide enough to me. I was contemplating taking one of the top rows of blocks and moving it to the side (rather than making more), but then that seemed like it would leave the quilt too short for Sophie's long legs.
In the end, I used the surplus bits and cut and sewed a few more to gain an extra row to add to the width of the quilt. Once I'd lay out the blocks in their final pattern, I had to tell everyone we couldn't open the doors because the wind was my enemy. Also, we were going to have to walk around it being on the floor for a while, since sewing takes time.
At one stage I thought I had sewn enough and could risk the doors half open, but that resulted in the wind blowing away about 85% of the rest of the layout before I could stop it. Thankfully I'd taken a lot of photos, so I just needed to sort through and lay them out again. Lesson learned though. Once it was finally sewn together, I was well pleased with the result, so I added the boarder and went to get some backing fabric from Spotlight (on sale whew!)
I am still not amazing at actual quilting, but I have been watching some videos on YouTube from Pin Cut Sew, and I must have picked up something, because this quilted much better than my previous attempts. I was going to wing it when it came to the quilting lines, but I ended up pre-marking them, because my blocks were not all square and I figured if I was juggling the quilt through the machine I didn't want to have any extra things to think about. It was worth it, because it did make the quilting easier.
Sophie went away to camp on Saturday morning and I had the quilt bound and finished for her when she came home on Monday. She's given the quilt a stamp of approval and Steve and I have reclaimed our quilt once more. I was pretty anti social for the ten days that I worked on this quilt. Headphones on and off to my little sewing area. Thankfully my family knew I needed the down time and were gracious to give it to me.
This quilt has some beautiful fabrics in it, PJ fabric, Luke's Christmas shirt, Sophie's halter top/shorts, some leftover maple leaves and cat fabric that Rachel bought in Japan and used to make Sophie a birthday pencil case, some other cat fabric that I got in Japan for Sophie too. I had enough of the pinky floral print (from Sophie's halter top trial) to make the binding for the quilt too. I also learnt that polyester thread does not play well with the very hot iron that I used to press the seams. I melted quite a few rows of stitching making this quilt!
There is something really lovely about seeing a home made quilt on a bed. Hours of work, various skills and at the end, something beautiful that will last a life time. Well worth the effort.
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