Mrs Moen: Finish It! Week 2

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Finish It! Week 2

I’m happy to say I have finished the top; just a few threads to snip and some pressing to do and it will be ready for quilting as soon as the backing fleece is dry.

Not rushing even a bit, I removed one column at the time from my design wall, pressed the seams

and stitched them together

emptying out quite a few of the blacks in my wheel-of-almost-empty-bobbins in the process.

The columns were made without a design wall and no matter how many times I rearranged them the colours and fabrics would not spread as evenly and lovely as they did in my head. Oh well; adding the top and bottom strips I did my best to balance out some of the most prominent colours like the acid greens and left the rest.

All in all, I love it.

Working with these fabrics brought me back to when I first cut the pieces. I was making a family quilt for, at the time, grandson-to-be’s christening and collected hands (traces, not the actual hands duh!) from his family members way before he was born. I had planned a blue & turquoise quilt but daughter wished for a green, more of an army colour scheme, so a greenish & turquoise quilt it was. With all the time in the world the fabrics were ordered, washed and cut (including the pieces for nephew’s quilt); the hand prints transferred onto fabric; the background grew (and grew) very nicely on my wall. I had no idea how big it had to be to make room for all the hands, but all good; still lots of time to finish before the big day. And then I got a bad case of pneumonia and was flat out for weeks. The quilt got finished(ish; the binding got basted on) the night before the christening without any need of non-human heating in the sewing room. Thank goodness for my co-grandma or there wouldn’t have been much of a party at all.

The quilt has grandson’s name (edited out thanks to Paint) and all his birth info and hand prints on there; some appliquéd and some quilted, and hangs over his bed at home.