Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Patches and Pinwheels finished!

I have a finish! Of my own! The Patches and Pinwheel quilt is officially on my futon (bed). It seemed like it was a long process but I guess as quilts go, it really wasn't. I checked older posts and found that I started it May 17th. That's not bad! I was trying to use up Leaders/Enders and whether I succeeded, I'm not sure. I always seem to have Leaders/Enders. But I have DO have a bed size quilt now!

Even when I started this I was wondering how I was going to quilt it. Putting together the quilts go fine (basically), it is trying to quilt a large quilt on a domestic machine with no long arm quilters in sight which gives me frustrations. But the patches got done without much thought. (Leader/Enders amount significantly decreased). The pinwheels got done with the help of an Easy Angle tool. Putting them all together was fun. The border triangles got added with a little inspiration from Elaine.

But quilting? Many of my blog friends suggested quilting in pieces so for a long time this quilt has been in quarters which actually made quilting on a domestic machine manageable. Overall pattern? I get so lost when I try that... But I figured I could keep my head if I thought about a petal pattern within a certain set of blocks (still got a little lost. Some backtracking there), and I really like how the quilting and the piecing match up. Finally the fourths were connected and the final quilting down the centers were completed without too many headaches.

I sat and stared at this border for the longest time but decided I'd never come up with a perfect solution and I just had to get this crossed off my to-do list so I went ahead and quilted "flower petals" in the empty spaces and more triangles in the final border. I hope it ties it all together.

Four months for a quilt... Okay. If I'd been doing it by hand it would have been four years (I've got one of those about too.)

(The quilt on Tetsu's side of the futon is another of Bonnie's patterns the Pineapple Blossom. That one was quilted by hand though.)

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