It's a Girl!

Okay, yeah, that title is intentionally misleading, but you'll get why I chose it.

Rob came to me and asked me to make a quilt for a co-worker.  She was due in like three weeks.  I wish there was an emoticon for the face I made.  We went to JoAnn's and picked a lovely focus fabric with tree branches on it.  The baby's room was decorated in a nature theme, so that was perfect.  We came home and I washed the fabric and cut the pieces and assembled the top.  And Rob came home and told me the lady was expecting a girl...

So, this quilt wasn't right anymore.  So, back to JoAnn's and we bought the same tree branch fabric in green and I pieced the exact same pattern in green, quilted it, and sent it.  We missed the delivery, but it was on her desk when she came back to work.

That left us with this lovely blue top that I pulled out the weekend Rob and Syd went to the coast and finished.  I put a lot of special little efforts into this quilt and I thought I'd show them off.  First, all the tree branches move in the same direction, so there is a definite "up" to the quilt. 

Second, I quilted this template into the center block, then echoed it at a quarter inch out. 

But, then, I used different elements of the template to fill all the smaller pieces.  Maybe I used a corner, or a point, or a curve.  But, they all came from this template, except the flower shapes that are in the brown squares.  For that, I pulled another template. 

In the large background sections around the stars, I used a half of the template. 

And, in the flying geese, I used just one of the corner points. 

 

 

When it came time to bind the quilt, I was trying to select a binding fabric.  I wanted to use one of the blues.  But, when I talked to Rob about that, he talked about how it's a distraction when a binding is made of one of the fabrics used in a pieced border, unless that is planned out very well.  And, I didn't.  He suggested I bind in the brown, but I didn't have enough of that, so I decided to do a Magic Binding.  

The Magic Binding is made up of two strips, so I cut a narrow strip of brown and a narrow strip of blue and sewed them together to create the binding.  I did that in WOF sections, then joined the sections with a diagonal seam.  What it gave me was a dark brown flange along the edge of the binding that separates the blue in the pieced border from the same blue in the binding.  It worked great, even though I only enjoyed half the magic.  I actually hand sewed the binding to the front of the quilt so I wouldn't have that extra line of stitching that showed on the back that they talk about in the tutorial. 

Another thing I did for the first time was to sew the unfinished edge of the sleeve into the binding.  That was a neat trick.  It meant I only had to sew the sleeve along one long edge, instead of along both long edges.  The sleeve isn't as easily removable as my others, but then I've never found a need to remove a sleeve from a quilt.  So, who cares?

Anyway, it looks great with the new blue curtains in the dining room, but there's not really a place in there to display it.  So, it will hopefully help bring the blue of the dining room into our brown living room.  This weekend, I will wash it to make sure I have all the blue washout pen out of it, and then I will block it square.  That will take an hour or so to pin down to the floor, exactly square and stretched to its real proportions.  But, it is soooooo worth it in the end.  It is always the last step before I enter a quilt in a show...just that little finishing touch.  I haven't done a post on blocking in a while, so maybe I'll post pictures of this one pinned out and how I do it.

Everybody have a great Friday!  I intend to get back to some hand quilting this weekend.  And, I have a miniature started that I need to move forward.  Rob has asked for another quilt for a friend.  And, I have a quilt that I'm making to donate for next year's Guild show to the boutique.  A busy quilting boy is definitely a happy quilting boy.

Lane