a quilt journey

I've just finished a baby quilt, but before it gets sent off to where it's going, I want to do a little show-and-tell.

I began this a while back as a lap quilt but couldn't get it done in time, and then thought it would make a nice baby quilt, with a certain person in mind. Since I'd made the one with eight inch squares a while back, and liked the square motif, I thought I'd try it with slightly smaller ones - these are about six-and-a-half inches. I started hand-quilting it with embroidery floss the way Anna and her mother do, in parallel lines across, but had to put it aside over the holidays.

Lately I finished and put on the binding; and now a thing or two to say about going around corners. Believe me, I know where the youtube video is on mitred corners, and I've even done it successfully once or twice! But it doesn't always come out. And sometimes I'm not even sure that such precision goes with a more casually made quilt, so I was just bunching up around each  corner, but... there's always the problem of that last corner - I can't quite seem to figure that one out. It got lumpy, and that's when I remembered something I had done before - which you can see here - a patch! So, I looked around for fabric to make a patch, and there was a Caribbean blue t-shirt from the thrift store. Just right! I cut it up, sewed a patch right onto that corner in a very obvious way.

Then there was another problem. While binding, I'd noticed a loose area of quilting thread, which I intended to pull over to the edge, and then tuck under the binding as I went near that area (I hope you get what I'm saying - don't know how else to put it!). But, I got sidetracked and forgot. So it was all bound, with this loop of floss sticking out. I decided to cut another patch from the blue; just to cover it over and protect it from getting caught in the future and possibly breaking the thread.

See it? There's some of the same color in that striped square. But then in looking at it, I saw the two patches were at one end of the quilt, so I figured I should add another somewhere else, for interest.

The reverse fabric is a child's print with pink, yellow and blue ducks on it. Very cute.

Why not cut out a duck? I'm not much of an artist, but I tried. My little bird ended up more of a general bluebird - good enough for me!

I just handstitched around the edges - it's a knit, it won't fray.

So, here it is in all its imperfections, which also include unevenly-cut squares. Those bothered me at first, but not anymore.

Last night Anna posted a very timely report on her sewing philosophy - she says she's not a perfectionist; well, neither am I. I'd never do anything if I were - I'm not so good at it. But I still enjoy the process, and I like to make lemonade when there's a goof - it's a good way to be creative and learn something. You can see both patches up near the top on either side, and the little bluebird down below. 

So, making this quilt was a journey for me, and now it's going on a journey to its new owner. And I've got another quilt halfway done in a bag right here.