Quilt #1 Update 2

I realized I never finished posting about the baby quilt I made for a family member (part 1 here). I did actually finish the quilt! Some notes below:

Front - I had some trouble around the dimensions of my piecing blocks. I had to cut many of the blocks down. It’s actually resulted in pieces smaller than what the pattern called for but I don’t think its noticeable.

Backing - the animal panel wasn’t quite as wide as I needed so I cut out strips of the blocks and resew them together to fit the size of my quilt better

Quilting - I did a clamshell pattern with a walking foot. Jacquie Gering actually covers the technique of how to do this with a walking foot in her book ‘Walk’. If you look closely at my quilt, you can see some of my lines for the clamshell pattern are a bit rough but it isn’t noticeable farther away (thankfully). This pattern ended up giving a nice effect to the finished quilt.

Binding - I ended up cutting the binding on the bias and I think it was the best decision given the pattern.

On to other quilts! I think in the future I will wait to post any new quilts until I’ve completed the project in full.

Quilt #1 Update 1

The first quilt I’m working on is a baby quilt for a family member. I already had some fabric from Paintbrush Studio’s Animal Kingdom Collection and I decided to pair it with the Zoo Dwellers pattern from Andy Knowlton. For piecing thread, I’m using 50 wt. Aurifil cotton thread (2805 Light Gray Turquoise) . I am still not sure if I will use this color for the actual quilting part but I will have some time before I have to decide.

As you can see above, I’m done with the cutting for all the piecing work (although I still need to make the binding tape and cut the backing). I will say the first thing that has made me nervous is the fact that this pattern calls for cutting out long white strips of fabric. I’m a bit worried that these strips aren’t completely square since I couldn’t cut them in one cut (too long for my table), I will have to keep an eye on my quilt blocks as I construct them and make sure they are square.

In terms of time, piecing is actually going pretty quickly even though I have to pause often to iron out all the seams. I think I will be able to finish the front of the quilt in the next day, although I haven’t tried sewing in the long white strips yet…