What I’m Lovin’ Wednesday: Quilting

I know that I briefly mentioned my new sewing machine that my mom gave me for Christmas (see here), but have I told you how much I LOVE it?!  I don’t think I’ve had the opportunity to rave about this thing yet, but I’m absolutely obsessed with it and have been going crazy with my sewing projects. 
With my dissertation hiatus, I didn’t have a lot of time for DIY projects, or anything really for that matter, so it is way past time for me to change that and get back to crafting with y'all.  Don’t you think?
I wanted to share with you the first quilt I made in January.  This was my second project with my new machine (see my first project here), and I had a blast making this quilt and it hardly took any time.  I popped in the movie “It’s Complicated” and I was done before the movie!  Super easy; anyone can do it.

I purchased a bunch of patterns with matching colors and cut them all to the same size.  I then pinned them together in the order in which I wanted.

I pinned the strips together and sewed them into pairs, and then sewed the pairs, and so on, and so on.  It may sound counter intuitive, but when you sew these, you’ve got to sew one side with the tops facing each other so that you get a nice seam.

After I completed the front side, I pinned on a sheet of batting and sewed them together.  This is a little tricky because you’ve got to get the batting the same size as the front cover.  It’s not hard really, just tedious.  I use organic batting just because I find it more breathable, but anything works fine really.

Tip: When you get to this stage the blanket starts becoming thicker, and more quilt-like.  Sometimes it becomes challenging to get the fabric under the machine.  If you stumble into this situation, just roll up the quilt into a tube, leaving what you’re working with sticking out.  I find that this tube method makes the fabrict a little more manageable.   

Now at this point I had the top cover and the batting.  All I had left to attach to the quilt was the back cover.  I pin on the back cover (I like a fleece-like softer fabric for the back cover, but it’s really up to your preference), leaving about half an inch hanging out all around.

I folded the extra piece of the back cover over onto the front cover, and covered both with quilt edges, which you can purchase in various colors and widths at any craft store.  I like 1-inch edges.  I pinned this all the way around the quilt and stitched.  Sidebar- Like my lovebirds in the background? ;-)

Ta-da!  Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?  No!!!  Well I’m no expert in quilting and I’m certain that if you Google “quilting” you will find some way more elaborate tutorials.  But this is how I make my quilts and we love them here in the Hawley house, so I hope you like this simple version as well.