« Quilting. Back from teaching at Loop! »
Finished Quilt! « »
OK, so here’s the finished quilt! (It was really cloudy last night…never did rain, though!)
I really love this one. It’s the biggest quilt that I’ve made so far, and I think it’s happy and awesome. That light turquoise-y blue is one of my favorite colors to be around. I rarely wear that color, but I love that color. It’s the color of swimming pool water. Remember how happy you got as a kid every time you went someplace and saw that there was a POOL!? That’s how this color makes me feel. Just, YAY!
I really think it’s interesting how disorganized the red squares became as I was doing my piecing. I knew as I was going that something didn’t quite work out with them, but until I had it all laid out on the floor, I didn’t realize how much some of them had wandered. Those red squares are frisky!
Here’s the back:
I put this one together by putting the front and back face to face, with the batting on top. I stitched all around the outside edge (leaving a 6″ opening,) turned it inside out with the batting in the middle of the two quilted pieces, then topstitched all around the outer edge. Then, I used a really pointy big-eye needle and tied it using a bamboo-cotton yarn.
I Frankenstein’d the batting together from spare parts. (I’m cheap) I did make sure, though, that all of the parts were the same composition, so that when I wash it, it’ll all do the same thing. You don’t want half of the quilt to shrink (or full, or whatever it’ll do) at a different rate than the rest of the quilt.) That’s why it’s important to use fabrics of similar weights and compositions on the top, too.
I’ve had a couple of emails from people encouraging me not to give up on knitting (after my last few posts, I realize I must seem pretty disillusioned.) Not to worry, fearless readers, I won’t. I think I had a post-winter, post-deadline crash, and I just needed to work through it.
I’m currently working on a knit top that will combine patchwork and knitting and hand-dyed yarn. I’ll start with the progress reports after I get back from teaching at Loop this weekend!