The Quilt is Finished - Finally!

My quilt is finally finished, and I am the one who quilted it.

Since the beginning, I’ve used this blog as a place to journal my progress on this quilt, and this is the final installment on the story (some may call it a saga!). This began life as a pattern for a quilt that I purchased in Paducah on my first trip there. I didn’t truly begin to work on it until the Pandemic hit, and I wanted to do some handstitching on a project. You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here. Along the way I gave it a shorthand name of “NeverEnding Embroidery” - but it’s done, and it’s proper name is Winter Memories.

I am motivated by deadlines, and I had committed to having this quilt done in time for my local quilt guild’s show in mid-September. Not to brag, but I did make it with 48 hours to spare.

One of the benefits of working on a pattern that has been around for a while is that I have gotten to see many finished quilts, and to see what I liked and what I didn’t.

I’d seen one of the quilts like this on instagram without a sashing, and I loved it.

This quilt taught me a lot about quilt design and layout, and many of the lessons I learned were only apparent when the quilt was completed…not a great time to learn that lesso. The center of the quilt is very densely quilted with Microquilter 100 weight - there’s a lot of thread in there. The borders are quilted with Aurifil 40 weight, and the quilting is set up to mirror the offset diamonds in the borders. It does not hang flat - there is a definite wave to it.

Several quilting friends confirmed with me that this was due to the difference between the density in quilting both parts of the quilt - oh, the things that you learn. At this point, I set out to see what I could to to mitigate this scenario at this point in the process - and I can assure you that ripping it out and starting over was not something I was willing to consider. Other than that…here are some things that I tried and which had some success.

Blocking was suggested by many as the first step in the process of straightening out the quilting here.

That was a scary word - I had never blocked a quilt before. This is a step I will now be incorporating in every quilt going forward. This quilt probably should have been blocked first on the inside section - before the teal border went on. More lessons.

One of my favorite blocks - and a closeup of the quilting.

You’ll notice in the blocking photo above that I removed the binding from the quilt. That was actually a swap out. I didn’t think that the double machine flange binding did anything to mitigate the wings that show up in the border…I think it made it worse. So as I was waiting for the quilt to dry, I found another light green grunge in the project box, and remade the binding. This binding was applied in the traditional method - stitched to the front, and then turned to the back by hand.

The project that started with handwork (almost) ended with more handwork…and a new season of Bakeoff in the background.

The new binding was on, and there was a definite improvement in the way it hung. I had always thought that I could live with a perfectly imperfect finish, but after a night’s sleep - I was back online researching how to deal with wonky, wavy borders.

Spray Starch is the answer. It’s usually applied by a longarm quilter who is dealing with a wavy border, but it kept coming up in searches.

That is something that I was willing to try - spraying it only on the borders, and gently ironing it dry DID make a difference.

It’s still not perfect, but I belong to a guild who believes “Done is better than perfect”.

One more lesson - I don’t ever want to quilt anything larger than this on my domestic machine - even with a longer bed, that’s why they have longarm machines. The domestic pushed me.

And the final lesson learned from this quilt…I will Never, Ever, Ever again enter a quilt into a show unless it’s done.

Thanks for hanging out with me as I finished this quilt. Please subscribe and follow along with me as I continue my journey. You never know what’s around the corner.