The Quilt Files, Episode 8

I'd been quilting for a couple years when I got exciting news: a wedding in the family! My brother-in-law was getting married, and they were taking their time planning the wedding—which meant I could take my time planning the quilt. I borrowed a pattern I'd been eyeing from my mom and headed over to my favorite fabric store to take advantage of my birthday discount. The pattern only called for four different fabrics, but I browsed the batiks until I found ones I would love to be sewing on for the next several months.

This quilt was a bit of a challenge for me. It was my first time cutting and piecing triangles, and it can be tricky getting the corners to join in exactly the right angle. But as you can see from the finished product, there weren't that many triangles to deal with, and getting the pattern aligned was fairly simple. (Although those big sections of sky blue are actually many pieces, not just a couple.) The hardest part was the quilting; this was the first larger (queen-size) quilt that I attempted to machine quilt. (I did have a deadline, after all, and I knew I couldn't meet it with hand-quilting, considering the slow progress I was making with my first project.) I had machine-quilted Boy's quilt, but that was a full-size. A queen size is a couple feet wider, and it was a challenge to keep the backing from getting all crumpled up underneath. (So maybe there might be a couple of wrinkles on the backing on the finished quilt, but they're not visible in the picture, so good enough for government work, I say.) I was quite pleased with the final result, and commented several times (half-seriously, or maybe three-quarters) that it was too bad I was giving it away. But I did, and cheerfully; after all, I still have scraps to play with. But you'll have to wait for a future Quilt Files for more on that.