Making a Patchwork Quilt: the hand-quilting is FINISHED!

Remember my patchwork quilt?

This quilt is officially my longest running work in progress: I started it way back when I was a teen, which is so long ago that if the quilt was a person it would now be a teenager itself, definitely old enough to drive a car and maybe technically an adult by now (yikes). 

After a flurry of quilt-making enthusiasm when I was a student, I put the part-finished quilt top away in a cupboard for years. When I rediscovered it in a box in 2012, I thought about just getting rid of it but that felt a bit wrong so when my mum said she liked it I decided to try and finish it as a gift for her. I got the quilt top finished by 2014... then put it in a box again and didn't look at it for another four years.

Last year I was full of enthusiasm for Finally Finishing long-running projects (including a patchwork blanket and another quilt), so in the spring I bought wadding, white backing fabric and white quilting thread ready to complete the quilt.

I washed and ironed the fabric and put the quilt sandwich together (if you're not familiar with quilting, this is the step when you put all the layers together ready to sew them) then started the hand quilting in the summer.

Now, I don't know if you've ever done any hand quilting but it's a seriously labour intensive process and a very repetitive one! It's also not exactly the ideal project to work on during the hot summer months (and last summer really was hot). So, after making a start I ended up taking a break for a couple of months... but I did a big push this autumn to put the hours in and managed to finish the quilting at the end of November. Woohoo!

I thought the Christmas quilt I made my sister took a long time, but this one is a bigger quilt and made up of smaller squares so I had a lot more (and longer) lines to stitch so there were waaaaay more hours of stitching to put into this quilt.

The Christmas quilt was also a lot neater than this one: I'd used a proper block for marking out the squares for the Christmas quilt and cut and sewed them super neatly. The squares for the old patchwork quilt were a lot more randomly sized - and sewn together rather wonkily, too! I started out the hand quilting using my previous method of using masking tape as a guide line to stitch along... but I soon abandoned this to stitch freehand, following the not remotely straight lines of the "squares". So, all the quilted lines on this quilt are pretty wobbly (and my stitching isn't that neat to begin with, I have so much respect for people who manage to do neat hand quilting because mine all turned out so messy!) but hopefully this just adds to the quilt's handmade charm rather than detracting from it.

I'd originally hoped to keep the fact that I was finishing this quilt a secret from my mum (so it would be a big surprise when it was done) but I soon realised that this was going to be impossible, simply because of logistics of hiding something that big. So I told her about it and we've spent many happy hours sitting watching TV and movies together in her living room while I stitched and stitched and stitched. Sometimes this fella kept us company, too.

I've mostly kept the quilt stashed in her spare bedroom, working on it in bits and pieces when I went round to visit. I took it back to my flat a couple of times thinking I'd be able to really focus on it and push the project forwards but this turned out to be a terrible strategy because I'd spend the whole evening hunched over the quilt, stitching away happily while listening to podcasts or audiobooks and the next day my neck and back would be very angry with me!

For the Christmas quilt I stitched pairs of lines at a time, working steadily outwards and marking off each pair on a neat little chart as I went. For this one I worked a bit more haphazardly, sewing out from the centre but stitching several lines at once. I didn't make a chart to track my progress this time, just laid the quilt upside down on the floor at regular intervals to get an overview of how much stitching was left (the stitched lines are much more visible on the back than the front as they stand out against the plain white instead of getting lost in all that colour and pattern).

By November 20th, I'd stitched out to the first two corners of the quilt. It was amazing what a difference finishing that first corner made: it suddenly started to feel like an actual quilt instead of just a big bundle of fabric.

 

 

 
Excited by the prospect of finally getting this baby FINISHED, I devoted the next few evenings to quilting. I got the third corner finished on the 22nd...

... then started on the fourth and final corner. I couldn't resist laying it out to take a few more "in progress" photos before the quilting was finished.

Having the end in sight felt great!

Sewing these final few lines was definitely the most enjoyable bit of the quilting process (hand quilting is so boring, you guys! oh my goodness!!), and I was full of glee when I tied off the last stitch that weekend.

Even though it's now been over a month since I finished the quilting, I still haven't taken any photos of it "finished" and ready for the binding.

I have trimmed off most of the excess wadding and backing fabric (another step that's made it look much more like a real quilt), bought a fabric sample card so my mum can choose the perfect colour for the binding fabric (this important decision is still in progress but she's currently leaning towards blue), and sold the quilting hoop to a friend (because frankly, I plan on never hand-sewing another quilt as long as I live!!!).

Once my mum has decided which colour she wants for the binding, I'll measure the quilt and order enough fabric plus some matching thread. Then it'll be time to get started on the final stage! Maybe this time round I'll actually follow the instructions properly (unlike last time)? Watch This Space.

Making a Christmas Quilt: the Finished Quilt!

Waaaay back in 2014 I decided to make a Christmas quilt for my sister. She loves Christmas and I thought a cosy, festive quilt would be a perfect, special gift.

I decided to hand sew the whole quilt... and massively underestimated how long that would take! After many, many hours of hand stitching I finally finished the quilt this spring, and gave it to my sister (hurrah!) and now I finally have lots of pics to share with you guys (double hurrah!).

This isn't the biggest thing I've made (that would be my double-bed-sized giant granny square blanket), or the longest-running work-in-progress that I've completed (that title is currently held by my mini patchwork squares blanket, which took six-and-a-half years from start to finish), but it's still a huge thing to have finished and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. Luckily my sister likes it, too!

You can read about the making of the quilt here and here, or just scroll down for lots of photos of the finished quilt in all its festive glory...

 

 

 

 

P.S. I might have finished this quilt but I'm not done with quilting! My current work-in-progress (although I've not been making much progress on it during this hot summer) is another patchwork quilt - click here to read all about it.

Making a Patchwork Quilt: My Longest-Running Work-in-Progress!

After finishing my patchwork mini squares blanket (which was a work-in-progress for six and a half years) and the Christmas quilt I made for my sister (which was a WIP for almost four years), I feel full of enthusiasm for Finally Finishing Things!

So, I've decided to tackle my biggest and oldest UFO (UnFinished Object): the patchwork quilt I started when I was a teenager. 

I started this project around 2001 or 2002, I think. It's so long ago that I can't remember whether I started it in my final year of sixth form or my first term of University - either way, it was a while ago!

In fact, I'd almost completely forgotten that this quilt existed until January 2012 when I found the half-finished quilt top stashed in a suitcase under my bed.

Back in my teens I'd used whatever cheap fabric I could get my hands on to make the squares, then sewn them together pretty haphazardly. I'm sure the fabric is a mix of loads of different fibre blends, some pre-washed and some not (i.e. probably a disaster waiting to happen when it gets washed for the first time).

It wasn't the most well-made, well-thought-out project, and upon rediscovering it I honestly thought it looked rather hideous.... but the idea of just throwing it away made me shudder.

I wasn't sure what to do about it (maybe put it back in the suitcase under the bed for another decade???) until my mum said that actually she really liked it and could I make it into a proper quilt for her. Problem solved, challenge accepted, et cetera.

At that point, the quilt top was part-stitched...

... with a few already-stitched rows ready to add...

... and lots of unstitched squares left, too.

I worked on the quilt on and off that year, gradually adding the remaining rows and squares...

... until December 2012, when it looked like this:

The squares in one corner of the quilt top didn't really match up with the rest of the quilt, so I took it out. I obviously hadn't cared about the mismatched section in my teens but on rediscovering the quilt it really bugged me so it had to go. (This section hung around it my stash for years then eventually found a new home and got turned into a fabulous monster bag!)

I decided to use the remaining squares to fill in the gap left by the mismatched piece, then added as many extra rows as I could before my stash of squares ran out.

I stitched a few squares together in 2013...

... added five more rows to the bottom of the quilt in February 2014...

 

...and filled in the "missing" corner in March 2014.

By April 2014 the quilt top was finished and I excitedly wrote that it was "finally ready to be turned into an actual quilt!"... before then packing it up and not looking at it for another four years (oops). 

 

This spring I am finally making a start on turning the quilt top into an actual quilt. I ordered some wadding and white backing fabric to complete the quilt, spreading it out on the floor of my bedroom just before we started work in there as part of my flat renovation project.

Even with most of the room emptied out, I only just had enough space!

I thought about trying to keep it a secret from my mum that I'd started the quilting, so I could just rock up one day with a finished quilt and say "ta-da!". I soon realised this was going to be impossible - it's so big and bulky now the wadding has been added that it would be very hard to hide even if I wasn't in the middle of a big DIY project with boxes everywhere and no spare space for anything.

So, I'm currently keeping the in-progress quilt and the quilting hoop in my parents' spare bedroom and working on it when I go round to visit them (and when I remember!).

I'm keeping the quilting simple, sewing a line of stitching down either side of each seam using white thread to match the backing fabric. I've got a total of 90 lines to sew, more than double the number I had to sew for my sister's Christmas quilt, which was smaller than this quilt and made up of larger squares. It took me at least 70 hours to hand quilt the Christmas quilt, so this one is going to take me... a while.

Wish me luck!!

Making a Christmas Quilt: Part Two

By December 2015, the Christmas quilt I was sewing for my sister looked like this:

(If you've not read Part One click here to catch up!).

2016 was a very busy year for me and (I'm slightly embarrassed to admit this) it took me nine months to get around to shopping for wadding and backing fabric to complete the quilt. When it arrived, though, I was excited to get stuck into the quilting process.

I found some nice red extra-wide fabric which wasn't a perfect match for the deeper red in the quilt top, but still looked good and meant I didn't have to worry about joining fabric together to make the back of the quilt. After washing and ironing the backing fabric, I ironed the quilt top...

... and laid all three layers out on our living room floor, pinning them together with special curved safety pins. 

As well as the wadding, backing fabric, and quilting pins, I also bought some special thread designed for hand-quilting and a massive (16 inch / 40 cm) quilting hoop - you use the hoop to help hold the fabric as you stitch. It was, I'll be honest here, a bit annoying having to buy a great big wooden hoop as well as all that other stuff (making a quilt is not cheap!) but all the hand quilting tutorials I read said you needed one and they were right.

I'd decided to do the quilting with red thread, sewing a line either side of each seam. I used masking tape to help mark out a line for me to stitch along, which I found worked really well.

It took a while to get the hang of the hand-quilting, and I'm sure if any "proper" quilters took a look at my stitches they'd be appalled by how messy they are... but I made slow and steady progress. Sitting under the layers of this quilt as I stitched it was super cosy!

It's a little hard to see the quilting lines in photos, but they stand out much more clearly in real life and as well as holding the layers of the quilt together they give it a lovely bit of added detail and texture.

The hand quilting process was relaxing but boy was it time-consuming! I timed myself one afternoon and found it took approximately one and a half hours to sew one of the grid lines across the quilt. With 44 lines to stitch in total, that's at least 66 hours of quilting (and probably a lot more - to say nothing of the time spent on all the other stages!).

In October I hit the halfway point...

... then spent so much of my spare time quilting that I got totally sick of it and had to take a break for a couple of weeks to do other things to stop myself going a bit bananas.

By late November I had just two lines left to stitch. I'd drawn a little diagram of the quilt and marked off each line in red pencil when it was finished so I could easily track my progress. It was very satisfying seeing it slowly fill up with red lines!

At the end of November, the quilting was finally finished! I took a late night victory selfie and (foolishly) predicted that I'd have it finished by Christmas.

The quilt was looking soooo gooood...

 

 ... though its size meant it was tricky getting a decent photo of the whole thing!

I asked my Facebook and Instagram followers what colour they thought I should use for the binding (there was a pretty decisive vote for red!), started looking up binding tutorials... and then got no further.

December that year was incredibly hectic. I packed everything I owned up into boxes, moved across the country and into a new flat, then almost immediately began lots of DIY projects. I might have possibly been able to find the time to do the final bit of stitching for the quilt, but I definitely didn't have the space in my brain for planning fabric purchases and getting my head round the binding instructions.

So, the quilt went in a box and it stayed there... until last month! A mere 17 months after I finished the hand-quilting! I know this is not the longest time anyone has neglected a work-in-progress (heck, I myself have another quilt which has been "in progress" since I was a teenager) but FOUR Christmases have now passed since I started making my Christmas quilt. Full of enthusiasm for Finally Finishing Things after finishing my mini squares blanket - I was DETERMINED to get this quilt finished.

Over the course of a few April evenings, I trimmed away the excess fabric and wadding, cut the binding fabric into strips and sewed them together, ironed them, then began sewing them to the quilt.

I totally misunderstood the instructions for how to do the corners (oops) but managed to get them looking okay in the end (though not remotely how they were actually supposed to look). 

Adding the binding wasn't exactly a quick process but after all the hours of stitching that have gone into this quilt (and all the months in between) it seemed to go by in a flash.

Now I know this is a bit of a tease as I don't have final photos to show you yet, but it is amazing how much impact adding the binding had on the overall look of the quilt. It actually looks like a quilt now instead of just a bunch of fabric sewn together. I know technically all a quilt is is a bunch of fabric sewn together but I'm sure you get what I mean - it looks complete now, it's delightful. 

I did a very happy dance when it was finished and I cannot wait to show you guys photos of how it turned out!

UPDATE: click here to see the finished quilt.