We Made a Quilt!!!

Today, Syd’s Sewing Circle (consisting entirely of Syd and Tina) completed their first quilt project without adult supervision (consisting of Syd’s talented mom)! 

We made an “I Spy” quilt this week while I was off work (another week of cost-saving shutdowns for AE).  It’s about 5′ by 5′, and we made it with some fabrics from my stash, and some fat quarters and quarter-yard cuts of cute things we found at Joann.  There is also a square (in the lower left corner of this picture) where Tina put together little poems like they have in the wonderful “I Spy” books – we printed them out on that super cool ink-jet paper, and sewed it in just like any other fabric square!  Fun!!  The backing is flannel, and I did a kind of “self-binding” with a few extra inches of the backing.  This went against the “rules” in all of the books, but when I was looking at the quilts I have around my house, I found one where Aunt Kathy had done the same thing.  I figured if she could do it, it must be ok, right?  Oh, and Mom?  Your handstitching on the binding on my bear paw quilt – unbelievable!!  I’ve never done any stitching that looks SO PRETTY! 

I’m pretty sure most of my quilting went againt the rules too… but hopefully no one will notice.  The piecing was fun, but ended up being a bit of an adventure (as far as quilting adventures go…).  We pieced it on two different machines – my super awesome Janome, with a special 1/4″ quilting foot, and Tina’s mom’s Singer Featherweight from the 40’s, with what I thought would work as a 1/4″ foot.  Our 1/4″ measurements ended up different, so we had to do some improvising in putting together all of the squares!  I did also get to use another cool foot and feature on the Janome – I used the whole dual-feel thing when I quilted it.  So cool!!! 

I learned a valuable lesson, as to why people like those curved safety pins or basting guns or spray adhesive for putting the whole thing together.  We used straight pins, and I have a ridiculous number of holes in my fingers now.  (Okay, one of them was from stabbing myself with a seam ripper.  At least I didn’t get any rotary cutter slices in my hands this time.  No one ever accused me of being coordinated.)

 Oops.  Just realized that it’s totally not square… it folds into a sort of trapezoid shape. 

A million thanks to Mom for getting us started on this game (We are having fun!  Maybe someday we’ll achieve even half of her expertise!), and for doing the math for me when I called her from the fabric store.  Apparently I’ve forgotten all of the geometry and math I ever learned… (except for “trapezoid”). 

More pictures (they all look pretty much the same!) are at http://sydnieann.shutterfly.com/