Drumroll please....ta-da! I finally finished this baby quilt using my great-grandma's quilt blocks! It may have taken me months and months to get started , and I had to let go of my perfectionism, and I had to teach myself how to hand-quilt, but it's finally finished!
I love, love, love this quilt. I love the fabrics and the fabric choices Great-grandma made, and how different they are from ones I would normally choose. It's not a matchy-matchy quilt. I was even able to find a large piece of fabric in her stash, which I used for the backing and binding.
I love how the hand-quilting looks great with these blocks, it really makes this quilt and helps create a vintage scrap-quilt look. I decided that this quilt was already busy enough without complicated quilting (and, I admit, this was only my second quilt doing hand-quilting, so I didn't want to try anything too ambitious). I just did simple outline stitching about 1/4" from all the seams.
So far, BT loves it, too ;)
-Lily
A few months ago, I posted about my Great Grandma's quilt blocks that I wanted to assemble into quilts. Finally, I've made some progress on the first one. I have the bow-tie quilt top all finished, and it's ready for basting and quilting!
Usually,
sewing a few squares into rows would be easy-peasy. However, it turns
out that these blocks are not all the same size. I don't know
why--maybe the fabric has shrunk or distorted after years in a box? Or
maybe they were never exactly the same size? Maybe that's why Grandma
never used them ;)
Whatever the reason, each block was slightly
different, enough that trying to assemble them into neat rows with
matching corners was soooo frustrating. I did a lot of seam-ripping (and a
moderate amount of venting to my patient hubby). What I finally had to do was insert a few small patches, as you can see in the pics, to make the blocks fit together. Then I had to give up trying to make the seams match perfectly and just go with it.
I think it's going to be an awesome baby quilt for our new baby. We didn't find out the gender, and I think that this quilt has enough pink, blue, and every other color that it will be perfect for a little boy or girl!
-Lily
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