Saturday, October 3, 2009

The Quilt Top!

Well, kids - here's my (little) big reveal! (We could call it my soft reveal?) The quilt top is done. I put hours into it this week, and finally finished it last week.

This project was done with a friend - because I seriously doubt that I would have finished such a step-rich project without her encouragement and prodding! We shopped together and apart, gathering up vintage sheets. Our big break was a very generous woman in a nearby town who had a box full of vintage bed linens she was willing to part with, for free!

There was one little problem - one of the fabrics that we used was simply too small to give us both all of the pieces that we needed. I think we both tackled this problem differently. She went back and cut out itty bitty squares out of the remnants of that fabric, to add to her existing blocks, to finish the pattern.

Me? I took whatever I had left, slapped it together...and was short exactly one small patch. No problem - I just used a piece of cotton left over from a friend's apron order. I cut a patch the same size as my 9-patch and kept on going!

Yesterday, I dragged my PJ'd kids out to a sewing machine shop a few miles from our home, Stitch in Time . Can I just say, I highly recommend them? I pulled up just a few minutes after closing, but the owner was more than happy to let me (and my two kids) into the shop so I could get the darning foot I needed. They have two locations, and the woman helping me assured me that if I could give her 24 hours notice, anything I needed from the larger location could be moved to the small location, which is closer to my home. Hurray for customer service! They specialize in Janome machines there...and I was drooling, just a little bit. They are beautiful machines!


Last night, Siu Jeun was sleeping very ill, and I didn't dare turn on my sewing machine. Instead, I got out a small embroidery hoop and stitched a small love note to the quilt's recipient, my daughter.

What do you think?




I pulled out my new darning foot this morning, just to play around...and I think I'm in love. I penned the words "I Love You" onto a scrap of felt, and them went over it with the machine. Hello, dreamy. So quick, so smooth...it gave me all sorts of ideas. What if I hid little messages in my quilting on BBJ's quilt? I could very easily throw a "Hi, BBJ!" or a "I Love You!" in there! The possibilities are endless.
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW! AWesome! Those squares must have taken forever. It's most lovely. Well done!

LunaMoonbeam said...

@ Zinke - Heh. This quilt is TRICKSY. I found my tutorial over at www.ohfransson.com - it's her Clothesline quilt. The quilt is all strips, sewn together and then cut into strips the other way to make small rows of three patches each. Make sense? It still took a long time, but at least I wasn't piecing 300 2" squares!!

Weezy said...

Simply amazing!!! It is so beautiful!!! You did a great job!!

Myrnie said...

Very lovely, honey :) I can't believe how much time you've spent on it!! (I must have craft ADD, I can't focus longer than an hour on anything :)

Su said...

Wow... oh my goodness! That's incredible! You can tell that A Lot of work went into it.

Casey said...

It turned out so beautiful! Good job!

Nikki said...

Lovely! Looks like it's a hit with the small one, too... I'm sure it'll be a treasure forever.