Oliver's Birthday Quilt Part 7

We're at the final stage of assembling the top for Oliver's birthday quilt. I've sorted and rearranged all the patchwork blocks, and stacked them in sewing order. Now I'll put them together in seven rows of five blocks each:

Two tricks I use when sewing blocks into rows: I always mark the first block's left-hand corner with a safety pin, so I know where the row starts. I also add a post-it to each pile showing the row number and sewing direction so I don't sew them out of order.

Here's the first row of blocks sewn together:

And all seven rows sewn together:

I then sew the rows together to finish the quilt top. Here's how it turned out:

To give you a better idea of the size, here it is on the sofa in my office:

The top took about 35 hours of cutting, pressing and sewing to put together, and this is a very easy pattern that I've made many times. Once I've batted, backed and pinned it I'll hand quilt it, which will take another 40 to 50 hours. It's truly a labor of love, and also why I never sell my quilts. Paying myself minimum wage for labor plus the cost of the materials would mean I'd have to charge $700.00 for it just to break even. :)

Comments

nightsmusic said…

It's so pretty. He's got a gramma that loves him :)

June 12, 2020 at 12:13 PM

Holiday Prep

For Thanksgiving this year we've invited some guests from Oliver's mom's side of the family, so I have to start prepping now to get the house in shape for the big day. The first major thing is having the carpets cleaned, which we've scheduled for next week. This weekend I'll be cleaning out four rooms to get them ready for that. I started with my front dining room, which I use as my sewing room. It was kind of a mess already, so it felt good to get everything cleared out. We'll be having ten people at dinner plus two babies, so this will give me a chance to figure out how to arrange two tables in this space. I think this will be my last time hosting a big Thanksgiving gathering. Mike has started his family with a lovely girl who has a huge, close-knit family of her own, while Katherine will likely be off at grad school out of state for the next several years. I'm also not getting any younger. My guy and I will always celebrate Thanksgiving, but ...

T-minus Day

This was our little Thanksgiving dinner last year, when it was just the three of us. Time keeps whittling down my favorite holiday; this year it will be just me and my guy, and we likely won't even have a turkey.* That will be a first in 35 years. I feel about Thanksgiving the way other people do about Christmas, and while it's a lot of work it's my favorite holiday. Of all the Thanksgivings I've had in the past sixty years, only three were truly terrible: one when I was a kid that I don't talk about (#1 most miserable); the time I roasted two turkeys together and hosted fifteen people whom I cooked for and served with zero help (the largest and #2 most miserable); and the one I spent in basic training (the #3 most miserable.) I have no pictures of any of those, thank heavens. In addition to doing all the cooking I'm the one who takes all the pictures, washes all the dishes and puts away all the leftovers. I suppose no one else cares because to them it...

Fell Off the Wagon

I did cut up that plastic dollar tote to make into something stronger, but got caught up with work and set it aside. Then last night some hand-dyed silk and pretty threads called my name, and, well . . . Felt SO good to do some handwork, except my neck began hurting about an hour into it. I tried changing the way I sit and work, but it's pretty obvious that the doc is right.

Valerean

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