What a windy day I chose to photograph this project! At least the rain had stopped and the sky was blue. And warm. 60° at noon in late October? It doesn’t get any better than this!
This was a quilt I started way back in the summer. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, at the cottage, not particularly suitable for the usual Lake Day. I had the urge to create something with what little inventory I had, on hand, and having recently spotted this I decided I should give it a try. Because I wanted only one set of the five blocks, as opposed to all four sets, and I wanted it larger than one-fourth of the quilt, I had to enlarge all the parts proportionally…. I got the math figured out and went to work. Then daughter decided it would be even more interesting if I linked the squares… I set about recutting parts… I barely had enough of the blue. I was just able to squeak by.
All the solid fabrics are Kona cotton solids. On the back, I used the same size square repeated, in the same Robert Kaufman Primrose Dot, as the front and the binding for continuity.
I chose to hand quilt a spiral square at 1 1/4″ intervals, which makes for superfast quilting.
Then I added my embroidered, quilt signing, discreet signature. The date and the baby’s name will have to wait for the arrival, in a couple of months. I am ahead for once!
Because I truly love the look of some of the machine quilted quilts I’m always tempted to think it’s quicker and would be fun to do. So many options…. So for this project I thought I’d check and see just how much time I’m putting into the quilting. This one is 44″ square, a nice sized baby quilt.
I machine piece most baby quilts so I didn’t bother taking the time to track that because what I do is no different that the next. A Sunday afternoon and it was finished.
I tracked the hand quilting and hand binding on this one and it came out to
1/2 hour to mark the quilting lines.
5 1/2 hours to hand quilt it.
1 1/2 hour to bind and embroidery it.
The verdict is in, for now….
For the 7 hours involved (a good part of which was done as a passenger in a car) I suppose I will continue to hand quilt. I love the way it looks and I love the feeling that I’m stitching every quilt with love. I often second guess myself, knowing that I could produce more and faster, but for me and now, I’m going to continue to hand quilt.
What about you? What’s your choice for quilting? I’d really like to hear it if you think I’m just a stuck in the mud dinosaur and need to get help….
Off to my local quilt store this morning to hopefully find all the colors for my next Kona solids project. I’m *really* excited about this one. Everyone in our house has been involved in this project. Can’t wait until I have enough to share!
Hey, don’t forget to click on the WIP button at the top. There are some really cool things going on, all over the world!!
