Show + Tell :: The Village

March 21 2018,

This quilt was started a while ago - and left to the side due to other commitments. I had a bunch of different size blocks.

My friend Laura came over one day and saw these blocks. She started touching it and said, oooh, I like this. But even better, she said she liked the back of the blocks even more.

I panicked. She wanted the seams to show. Thus this led to a few months of uncomfortable-ness. I continued making blocks, piecing them as if the front was really the front, and ignoring the back.

Front of Quilt

After a month of so of vigorously piecing, the top was done. I brought it over to Laura and asked her one last time if she was sure that she wanted the seams on the front. And she confirmed with a yes.

Below is the quilt top right side.

Below is the quilt top "wrong" side up.

Laura wanted the quilting to be minimal, thus I quilted it grid wise with a 4" gap. I prefer to have it be a denser, but she seems to like the quilting to be minimal.

I tried to use the Clover Hera Marker, but could not make it show up well. Next I tried the chalk wheel, and it marked successfully, but I was worried about having it leave a mark. So after the first line was sewn, hubby made a contraption of combining two quilting bar with masking tape and twist ties. It worked for a while until it started slipping. I kept on measuring to make sure that the bar had not moved. With the bumps on the quilt, it was hard to prevent the bar from getting caught.

I was looking to buy a longer bar, which Janome does have, which would cost $18.00. This extra long bar "allows spacing up to 4 1/4".

This would be a waste of money for me, because I rarely do 4" quilting lines. Then I realized I should just flip it where I quilted from the back. I made my marks with the Hera Marker, took off the quilting bar contraption and quilted. The first line I did was a shot in the dark and I crossed my fingers to see if it turned out fine. It did. I continued and finished the quilt that way. Perfect.

Then it was time for the binding - I couldn't find my sewing box. Hubby looked and I looked. I had put it away for Chinese New Year, a month ago. We looked and looked and couldn't find it. It contained my thimbles, not one thimble, but all my thimbles. For half of the quilt, I used my fingers to push through the needle - then my fingers started to hurt. I realized I had bought finger cots and decided to use that.

After everything was said and done, we found the sewing box - it was under a black cloth in my sewing closet.

Done, done done, next, next, next.

Here are pictures of the quilt at her forever home.

Title: The Village (for Laura)
Dimension: Approximately 73" x 41"
Materials: Cotton Batik
Method: Machine pieced + machine quilted
Date completed: 03.2018

Quilt & Bitch