2.19.2012

Auction Quilt

In order to get volunteer hours at my daughters school and donate to the school auction, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and make a quilt to be auctioned off. I picked a quilt I thought I could make quickly. After having kept track of everything I discovered I'm either a really slow quilter or this hobby is WAY more time consuming then I thought! All told it took me 26 hours to put this one together. In my defense I will say I took a step that I don't normally take. It took up three hours of that total: knotting and hand sewing in the quilting thread tails so the stitching won't come out. Normally I'm lazy and just back tack, figuring if the stitching pops I'll just fix it since all the quilts I make are for family or friends. What I learned was, it actually looks a lot nicer done the "right" way. lol... I do like hand work so I'll probably continue this "extra" step for future quilts even if it takes more time. For the this quilt I also hand bound the back of the binding which always takes a while but went faster then I thought it would, 3 hours to cut, sew and stitch the binding to the quilt. Not bad! I love that step anyway. ^^

The front
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The back
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A bit of detail on the back
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Pattern (and kit): Positively Perfect Nap Quilt 54" x 66"
Fabric: Hometown by Sweetwater for Moda Fabrics. Backing fabric is flannel with scrap pieces from the front.
Hours to complete: 26

4 comments:

KMServino said...

I really love the colors you picked for this quilt. It looks great, and I love the one plus on the back.

Just Jenn said...

Thanks!

Aviva said...

Lovely! And really, I think 26 hours start to finish sounds amazingly quick for finishing a quilt. I bet it will be a big seller at the school auction!

Rebecca Grace said...

Congratulations on your beautiful quilt!

It always annoys me when someone looks at one of my quilts, then asks me, "How long did it take you to DO that?" From their facial expression and intonation, you'd think I had spent hours and hour carving an elaborate pattern into my leg with a razor blade instead of enjoying myself. Then they say something like, "Wow, it's cool, but I could NEVER do that."

To me, that's part of the draw. If I was a golfer instead of a quilter, I'd be spending the same amount of money (on tee times, new clubs, and the drivintg range instead of on fabric, thread, and sewing machine attachments), and I'd spend as much time as I could on my hobby, but I'd have nothing to show for it except maybe a tacky little trophy and some really boring golf stories. When so much of the other stuff I do -- laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping -- gets done over and over again with no lasting results, I love the relative permanence of a quilt.

One question: Are you quilting by hand, or by machine? When I quilt by hand, I bury the knots between the layers the way you describe, but when I'm machine quilting like I'm doing for my current project, I start and stop a line of stitching with several tiny stitches that are too small to pull out. Not my invention -- I got this from Diane Gaudynski's and Harriet Hargrave's machine quilting books. Stitches are secured without the unattractive buildup of backtracking, and it goes a lot faster than hand knotting and burying thread tails.

Thanks for sharing this lovely quilt!