Quilting part 4

Well kids.
Its been a long two years (okay, maybe closer to 2.5, but who's counting?), but I finished the quilt! I can barely believe it myself.

Here's how it looks in all its finished glory:

 In these pictures the colors look more vibrant than they really are, but I think you get the idea. What a journey this has been.

First there was the hexagon nightmare.
You all know how that went.

But then there was the basting. Which really wasn't a night mare, but required I learn about a whole bunch of new sewing techniques and taught me that I am WAY TOO novice to even attempt crazy quilting.

The thing about crazy quilting is you have to have a VERY steady hand. You (as in the person) have to control the pace of the fabric going under the needle because you have no feeddogs to rely on it. Its rather intimidating, as the first few times I tried it I had stiches that were 1 milimeter long all the way to stitches up to about an inch long. I learned quickly that my pace was miserable and I turned way too quickly in the fabric. I would make sharp lefts and rights, instead of nice beautiful curves.

Also, crazy quilting was not the way to go. So, I had to learn another method.

So, on I went to straight foot stitching, using a foot that was made for quilting so I could stitch in the ditch as they say. I wound up with this, which I actually rather liked. Its a curvy stitch on a diagonal with a straight stitch mixed in. This is the back of the quilt.

Here's where I learned about tension. If you look closely (and no, I didn't provide a close up so you could see my mistakes) you can see how the tension was set all wrong on some of my rows so the stitches pile up. While I was quilting I didn't know this, mostly because it shows on the backside, not the front, so I would do a whole row and flip it over. Then I'd say oh F*C%. It was way too much to pull out. So, another lesson learned. Another "special feature" of Owen's quilt.


After getting it all quilted I had a few hexies left so I randomly sewed them on the back side to add some color. Some of them cover up mistakes, but others I just put wherever.







Once the hexies were all sewn on I had to decide about the edges.  I knew that I didn't want to have a straight edge, because you know, I never just do things the easy way. I wanted to preserve the hexie pattern, so I found myself reading all about convex and concave corners in quilt binding.

And thats when I figured out I had to make bias tape.  A crap ton of it.

So, another tutorial, another day. I made about a million yards of bias tape (Which is material cut on the bias so it stretches and gives more, folded, ironed, folded and ironed again). Tedious stuff.

Then I pinned that around the quilt and started in my journey of angled corners. Bias tape is machine sewn on the front and hand sewn on the back (if you do it the way I did) and I did a double bias tape so it was stronger. Getting all those corners was sort of a nightmare, but I figured it out.

And then, just this week, I finally sewed the last little bit.

I cannot promise that it is perfect (ha!)
or even beautiful (ha! ha!)
Or that even 1/4 of the binding stitches are hidden (because they clearly aren't!)
Or that I didn't make some very real mistakes on this thing (please don't zoom in too close on the actual quilt!)

But, I can officially say that I made my first quilt and I actually like it.
It didn't scare me away, and now I'm moving on to other things for the new house.
But I feel another one of these things in my future.

Tonight, when I gave it to Owen he said "Thank you momma!" and when I asked him what he wanted to do with it, he said, put it in my crib so I can go to sleep. Right this moment he's all wrapped up in it, snoozing away. And that precious smile and adorable face made every moment of it worth it.