Quilting For Cool People

Hello, hello!  I’ve just gotten off work, and am super excited about blogging again! I wanted to blog yesterday, but I was hit with a small bout of food poisoning, so no blogging for me. 

I am working on a quilt.  I went to Mollie Johnanson’s blog, Wild Olive, and saw a cute baby quilt someone had done.  They used some of her adorable embroidery patterns on some of the patches.  Then I read Elsie’s blog over at A Beautiful Mess, and looked at her home tour.  She said that she keeps a light quilt on the bed for summer.  I have huge comforters that I keep, since we keep the apartment so cold at night, but I always end up shucking the comforter, so I thought maybe I should try using just a quilt.  Comforters look nice, and I suppose I could keep a comforter handy as well, but in Texas, it does get hot, so I thought I’d make a really cool patchwork quilt to keep on the bed when it’s not cold out.  I have two quilts already- one handed down from my great granny Derrick, and one my granny made in hopes I’d have a baby.  It’s big for a baby quilt.  I mean, it covers me!  And I think maybe a third, and maybe even more, may be in order.  It’s nearing the end of summer, but I'm in Texas, so it’s still hot as shit outside, and I don’t think it’ll get anywhere near cool until like November at the earliest, so I still have time to don the quilts!  Yes!!  Here is a preview.

So, what I basically did is figure out how big I want the quilt to be. I want it huge.  So, I took the measurements of my bed.  I decided how big I wanted the squares to be, and decided on 6".  Our bed is 56" wide and 79 ".  I figured out that I wanted my quilt to be 60 wide and 84 long.  Those both divide evenly into 6 inch squares, so I have 10 across and 14 down.  That sounds like a way complicated math equation, like something that may be on some crazy test in high school, right???

Luckily, I, for some reason, purchased a quilt block template to make 6.5” squares a long time ago.  I tried to use a rotary cutter on a self healing mat.  That did not work.  I have to press way too hard, and it hurts my funky wrist.  So, I just traced around the square 140 TIMES!!!! And then cut them all out.  All 140 of them, by hand.  Wow.

I am currently sewing the rows of 10 together.  I have 6 or 7 done.  I’m doing it all by hand, since I think that’s the only way to really do a quilt, and anyone who knows me knows I hate to use sewing machines.  It’s going surprisingly quickly, too! So, here is a photo of some of the rows.  I’m super excited to get it all pieced together.  THEN, I get to pick out some fabric for the back.  I’m thinking cupcakes.  I also need to figure out how to add "batting" or whatever.  I think there is specific quilt batting that's not like the stuffing for pillows and you sandwich that between the top and bottom layers and THEN you have to work on stitching that down all over, so I'll be doing this until I'm 65.