My little baby godson is graduating from high school. Since I don't get to see him very often, he tends to remain the little guy we teased about sitting in the cup holder on a crowded, cross Nebraska trip we took about 13 years ago. I've seen him since then, but that is how "Joey" is forever engraved in my heart.
I wanted to make him a graduation quilt because my mom always made graduation quilts for her grandchildren. It isn't Joey's fault that she got (#@*)(*&$ over by pancreatic cancer and isn't here to do the honors. Since he likes blues and oranges I pulled those fabrics from my stash. I'm happy to report I have some of the blue fabrics from mom's stash in the quilt, but I had to go out and buy a couple of orange fabrics since I DON'T OWN A SINGLE PIECE OF ORANGE. Oy.
I wanted to piece something kind of guy-ish, so I worked in guy-esque colors and came up with what is shown here. (Unfortunately I tend to take pictures indoors and at night so the colors aren't quite accurate.) I've always hand quilted my quilts but as there won't be time for that, I decided to take a deep breath and machine quilt this bad boy. I moved my Bernina to the downstairs dining room table and had what I thought was a MAGNIFICENT set-up - I had the table extended and opened up the far left end and dropped the Bernina into the open slot (on top of a little table that fit under the dining room table) so that it was flush with the level of the big table. Kind of like the world's biggest sewing table,woo hoo! It took me the better part of an afternoon to figure it all out, but I did and it was KILLER! Then I sat down to sew and the WHOLE DINING ROOM TABLE WOBBLED with the vibration from my machine.
"@)@#)#$(&*@#(*&%^#&^&!@%,"
Joe came home, took one look and said, "The table isn't stable when it's opened up like that, it's always going to wobble." Great. Put the table back together and worked with the machine on top, not the best arrangement but at least the table was there to hold the weight of the quilt.
I used my first Auriful thread when piecing the top, I wanted to see what all the fuss was all about. (FYI it's worth every penny, I'm a convert.) I decided to leave it in the machine for quilting and was very glad I did. Lovely stuff and best of all, a full bobbin seems to last forever! Since I know very little about machine quilting (other than watching about 100 YouTube videos) I jumped in and worked from the center out. Bad part - the large orange square is smack in the center and that is NOT where you want to begin machine quilting if you've never done it before. I've done some FMQ stippling, but I was all fired up to do something with a little more panache. "Panache" involved ripping it out about three times, and BTW when you free motion quilt push THE HALF SPEED button on the machine so you don't achieve that difficult 300 stitches to the inch. (Total bitch to rip out.) I spent ages on that part and HATED it. Moving on to the next area, I threw in the towel and put on the walking foot, did some angular lines. Better. For the stashing strips I was ready to throw caution to the wind again and - this time with the half speed button switched on - I
went back to doing funky, wandering squares. Hey.... I liked those. Then funky, wandering tubes with stipple in the center. Liked that, too! Loopy loops. This was FUN. I was getting better. Long story short, the quilt is finished and with the exception of the center (which looks like Helen Keller did that part) I'm pretty happy with the results. The binding was on in a snap because I love hand sewing down the back of the binding, it's very zen. Threw it in the washer, into the dryer and got the nice, crinkly look of a finished quilt. Mission accomplished, right? Nope.
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| Fuzzy picture, sorry. Loopy! |
Mom always busted my chops because I never labeled my quilts. I never liked that part and wasn't all in to having my name on things, or even the name of the quilt on the back. It just never seemed important. This one was all ready to go and would have made the graduation deadline....but it didn't have a label and my mom is apparently STILL busting my chops because I knew I had to put a label on that thing. I'll skip the epic narrative of that (you don't want to know) and managed to finish up a semi-respectable label and stitched it on to the back. It will be late for graduation, but not by much. I learned a LOT, most surprisingly that I really enjoyed machine quilting. I have a much deeper appreciation of the work free motion quilters do. Best of all, my quilting groove is back and I'm in my sewing room almost every day. I'm already happier and better able to cope with the everyday realities that sometimes overwhelm. Win win win.
