Not So Small Quilt

I FINALLY finished this quilt. I spray basted it ages ago (April!), started hand quilting it, with the intention to only hand quilt the center, which is really annoying to machine quilt anyway, and then I stopped. And the spray basting only lasts a week, so after I’d put it down for a little, and it had gotten folded and creased, it sort of grew into a monster project.  Because I’d already quilted all around the edges and bound it for crying out loud, and now it was no longer basted.  But it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d been expecting and thus putting off.  I smoothed it out, stuck it in the machine with the walking foot and finished it up.  Yay!  Now I am that much closer to starting two baby quilts I’d like to make.  Not that I’ve been quilting much lately, I’ve been more interested in painting tiny cubes to look like houses… I need to finish those too.  Too many things to finish!

Here’s where I left it back in April.

Anyway, it isn’t any normal size, I just started the blocks, put them together, then added a border and binding. I think it is smaller than a twin, but it does a pretty good job on my daughter’s small kid’s bed. So good. It was supposed to be her two year old quilt, but I’m about three months late. Pretty good really! I like how the pattern came out, designing with disappearing nine patches is fun.

I also like how the quilting in circles came out. Circles on squares are groovy. And I like how the hand quilting looks more gently bunchy than the machine quilting, which just looks deeply grooved. I’m sorry I didn’t hand quilt the whole thing, although my hand quilting is really bad. I’ve never hand quilted anything before, it was fun, but unfortunately my housemate mistook my hand quilting for basting. Yes, the stitches were much too big. I was trying to do it without a quilting frame or embroidery hoop, and without pulling the needle all the way through every half stitch. I guess I am too lazy to do hand quilting ‘right’. I’ll try to get the stitches smaller next time. I should try an embroidery hoop, but I was worried that it would stretch the quilt out of shape. Maybe I’ll try a small wholecloth quilt next, and work on my quilting that way. One of the two baby quilts in my queue? But I’d like to make a white wholecloth quilt with red stitching… which doesn’t sound like a very good baby quilt. Ah well. Another project to never get to. Reminds me of little red and white doll quilt by Redwork in Germany, which, hey, has circles quilted over squares! Hee. Now I’m inspired again.