Friday, June 26, 2015

Summertime Quilt

My newest completed quilt is called Summertime.  It is from The Quilter magazine July 2005 page 20.
This quilt is about 92" by 107"  That is what the pattern says.  I haven't actually measured mine.

Here is the finished quilt.  It is a log cabin style with one half of the strips narrower than the other half.  In my case it is the blue.  I didn't want the blue to overpower the quilt.

Here is a sample of the binding.  I used strips from all of the fabric on the front of the quilt to make the binding.  I also cut the binding strips different lengths.  That made it easier to use scraps and make the strips at the end piece together nicely.

Here is a picture of what each square looks like.

Here you can see how each square is turned a different direction, which makes the overall zig-zag design.

Can you see the seam halfway between the binding and the bottom of the picture.  If not then I am glad.  That seam caused me to name the quilt Sunflowers from Hell while I was quilting it.
I quilted this quilt on my mom's quilting machine.  I carefully quilted the sunflower border to make it look like a border if you looked closely.  I got to the end of the quilt and found that I was 8 inches short for what I need on the quilting machine.  About 6 inches short of the quilt front.
I had one small piece of fabric left.  I cut it into 4 pieces each about 8 inches long and 27 inches wide. That was all the fabric I had.  I sewed the strips together on the sewing machine and got a piece then that was 8 inches by 108 inches.
I then had to sew the 108 inch long strip onto the backing that was on the quilting machine by hand.
I sewed the tiniest stitches I could.  Knotted it every couple of feet. And had very sore fingers by the time I was done.  Thus the name Sunflowers from Hell.  Thankfully there was enough fabric to finish the backing.
So much for my nice design of making the sunflower border having it's quilting look like it was making a border.  I quilted as close to the edge as I could and was ready to chop most of the border off, but mom talked me out of it.  I'm glad she did.
I actually love this quilt and should give it a nice name. LOL.