I recently sent off my first quilt top/sandwich to be professionally quilted (because I still suck at quilting) and I’ve never been so happy. I set up a consultation with a local quilt shop. They had me lay out the quilt while we discussed thread colors (anything but white), quilting patterns, and turnaround time (8-10 weeks). It was much easier than I thought. Hopefully I will become more confident in my quilting so that I can start quilting my own quilts.
The quilt I made is called Iridescence, which was created by Craftsy and written by Slice of Pi. I first noticed the quilt thanks to Angela Walters’ YouTube TV show “The Midnight Quilt Show” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIRFPMS6tI). If you haven’t seen it, head over to YouTube to check it out. The show has now ended but the episodes are still there, the quilts are beautiful, and her commentary is hysterical. FYI, she loves her wine. After watching the entire episode, I fell in love with the quilt. I mean what’s not to love. The quilt is all bright, beautiful colors so you know its instantly one of my favorites.
I ordered the quilt kit through Bluprint (Craftsy’s old name). I love a good quilt kit. It came equipped with all the fat quarters (Boundless Fabric) necessary for the top (20), binding fabric (1/2 yard), and background fabric, Fog (2 yards). A quilt kit is a lot cheaper than purchasing the fabric individually. The package arrived a few days later. It still amazes me that all of this folded fabric will turn into a colorific quilt.
As soon as the quilt kit arrived, I cleared off my sewing area (my kitchen table) and started sorting the fabrics by color. I’ve already read the pattern (once you order a quilt kit, the company emails you the PDF version along with the paper version). So many pretty colors. I really love the blue-greens and the reds. But really, they are all beautiful. I love them all.
The pattern has 20 different blocks, 4 across and 5 down. It calls for half-square triangles and squares. That’s it. That’s the quilt. Easy peasy, especially for a beginner like myself. To make them, the pattern calls for subcutting. If you don’t know what subcutting is, its essentially cutting a larger piece of fabrics into multiple smaller pieces, such as cutting 1 yard of fabric into 12″ strips then cutting the strips into 12″ squares or into 6″ squares. Genius right?! It saves so much time.
So I did have a bit of trouble telling some of the colors apart. I mean Hot Pink and Cherry; Blue Lagoon and Mint; Sunshine and Saffron. AHH! I almost considered this a nightmare. Almost! I cut up all the squares, stacked them, and labelled them as best I could. I figured if I named them incorrectly, at least the wrong color would be wrong in all the squares it was included in. If I used Flamingo instead of Hot Pink, then at least it would Flamingo in all the wrong places.
After getting organized, I started on the quilt. The pattern makes it easy to decipher which colors are used in each square. Angela Walters does a great video on how to keep each block together. I used the method and I loved it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3wbw8GiCRQ It allowed me to keep everything together with thread and when I was ready sew the whole block together, I just cut the threads, press, and sew.
The first two blocks are complete. The first consists of Hot Pink and Fog on the outer most square, Sunshine on the second, Butter on the third, Flamingo on the fourth, and Mint being the center of attention. This was the only one that had the rows completely uneven but look at the back, perfect pressing. The second block is my favorite. I love the color placement. Its Blue Lagoon, Jewel (might be my new favorite color), Mulberry, Deep Sea, and Purple.
The first row came together rather quickly and I just had to say that I absolutely loved it. I was anxious to finish the remaining 4 rows just to see how it would look. I’m very impatient when it comes to sewing and quilting. I want instant gratification. I like to say that if I could snap my fingers at a fat quarter or layer cake bundle and produce a gorgeous quilt, I would. How cool would that be? My dream superpower I guess. That might be a little sad to some.
The rest of the quilt came along quite nice. After I finished sewing the 20 blocks together, I noticed two errors and boy are they driving me crazy. I can’t hep but see them. I refused to undo all those stitches to fix it. The first mistake was in the first row and the last block. I apparently made the mistake of turning the last row of the block the wrong way and sewing it. I CAN’T UNSEE IT!
And I’m done. I wish I had a picture of the completed quilt, but I didn’t think about it until after it was dropped off to the quilters. I have to say it turned out so much better than I ever could have expected, if that’s possible. The colors pop, the design flawless. I am in love. I think I will keep this quilt for myself. Was there ever any doubt?! I mean its the first quilt I made that is actually going to be quilted.
