Oliver's Birthday Quilt

Kicking off my summer with a quilt for my grandson's first birthday seems like a fun project, and I thought I'd as I go through the steps of making it I'd take pics for the blog. I don't intend to teach you all how to make a quilt in a week, but I thought it might be interesting for you to see exactly how I turn a pile of fabric into a quilt. :)

This will be a lap-size quilt so Oliver can use it when he gets older. As I mentioned last month I've already purchased the fabric and chosen the pattern, as you see here:

The first step for me to make any quilt is to begin by assuring that I have all the supplies I'm going to need. I always have plenty quilting thread on hand, and I'm also good on batting, so that left the binding. I have been trying to make my own instead of buying it, but while I was spring cleaning I unearthed a bunch of purchased binding that I'd now like to use up:

Fortunately among the heaps I found enough off-white binding to finish off a lap quilt:

Now that I've checked off everything I need for supplies, I begin the process by pressing all the fabric I'll need to cut. That's this times twelve fat quarters:

Onto the cutting. Each fat quarter has to be cut into various-size strips, which I'll then mix up and sew together to make the quilt blocks (because this pattern is still being sold I will have to be vague about some of the details. It's an easy one that turns out neat, though, and I've made a dozen quilts from it, so I think it's totally worth the price.) I go slowly with the rotary cutter these days, so this takes two or three nights:

Stay tuned to see what happens next.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

Very much looking forward to this! Just a note, I do four fat quarters at a time, stacked, with my iron on steam. It goes quicker that way. :)

June 6, 2020 at 6:25 PM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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