I mentioned a new sewing machine in an earlier post. I had been sewing machine-less for a while, so having one back in my life called for a very special project to break it in. After seeing a youtube video demonstrating 'the 1600' quilt project, I foolishly decided to do that.
Watching the video is dangerous. It will delude you into thinking that you can make a quilt face in 35 minutes. It made me think that I could just go ahead make a damn quilt with no experience or previous real desire to quilt. Full disclosure: I made some 9 square faces when I was a kid, but the basting, tying and edging was done by an adult. And when I watched the video I was under the influence of nyquil. For a cold I had. Seriously.
The project calls for a 'jelly roll'--which is simply a pre-made bundle of 2.5" wide fabric strips. I am not a fan of traditional quilt fabrics, or expensive 'time savers', so I made my own strips. My fabric was a pile of batik fat quarters that I got on sale, and I just took out my cutting mat and sliced up a pile of strips. I ended up using 12 fat quarters for this project.
I mixed up the colors so it was more or less random, then sewed all the strips end to end on a diagonal.
After the seam was sewn, I cut off most of the extra fabric.
What a mitered seam looks like opened.
I was left with a long strip. Seriously long. I didn't measure, but I expect it was slightly less than the 1600" long it was supposed to be. I dug around in a massive pile for the ends, tried to make sure the fabric wasn't twisted (it was...like a lot...) and put right sides together and sewed a looooong seam. When I got to the middle, I cut the fold, releasing the twisted edge and finishing the seam. I opened it, pressed it, folded it in half again and sewed another seam. I don't know if I sewed four long seams of five, but it ended up looking like this:
It was pretty square at this point, though it looks rectangular...optical illusion, people. It's a lot smaller than the original 1600" quilts, because I didn't change my sewing machine foot. That means I sewed a thicker seam than 1/4", which narrowed my strips and small-ened the finished face. Right here it's 50" x 53", which is somewhere between craft size and twin size. I am calling it 'watching television' size. The strips randomized pretty well, and since they were shorter, I ended up with a really nice piecework effect. Here's a closeup.
I decided that I wanted to play this bitch fancy, and pulled out five matching fat quarters for a border. I cut it into strips 4.5" wide, mitered the ends like the strips for the face, and sewed them to the edges of the quilt face.
I also got a half yard of this beautiful stuff, and cut 2.5" strips for the binding.
Above: The finished face with the border fabric. I mitered the corners, because it turns out it's easier to do it that way. Who knew?
Below: The face, after free-motion quilting the edge.
That's right, folks. I free-motioned the borders. It turned out kind of laughably bad, but I'm cool with that. This quilt was an effing journey, and there's no way in hell I'm ripping that shit and redoing it, you know what I mean? No. Way. In. Hell. I realized there was no way I was free-motioning the inside, so I stitched the ditch every other line of fabric. It should be fine.
My batting was 80% cotton, 20% polyester, no scrim, low-loft 'heirloom' thickness batting. I got it for $12 on sale at Hancock fabrics, and it worked awesome. I wanted the quilt to lie fairly flat, so the detail in the batik wouldn't get lost. The backing is a wide-width quilter's flannel in a sort of rotten tomato color that matches my couch.
I spray basted the quilt, because I'm impatient and lazy, and I like things that come in spray cans. It worked awesome. I put in Popeye and started basting and was done before Sweet pea even came into the picture. Like really. The basting spray was half price on Joann's website, so I picked it up at a steal.
My 2.5" binding strips were folded in half and pressed, pinned to the trimmed edges of the quilt, and sewed down with the folded edge facing the center of the quilt.
Like this.
Then I wrapped the folded edge around to the back and hand stitched it to the back.
Here's the finished quilt, measuring 60something by 60something. It is shown here on a full size bed, because that's where it could lay flat for photo taking. It is destined for my mom's couch, where it will keep her toesies warm while she works on her own projects.
From start to finish, it took 1 week, and the materials came in under $50 total, excluding the free motion quilting foot, which was $7 with shipping on amazon.com. So fine, it was $57 all told.
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