Unscheduled Quilting Lesson

On October 31, 2016, my husband retired from his job.  All has been pretty well, and he is happy not to be working and traveling on his job anymore.  He got me some wonderful gift cards, to a couple local quilt shops, for Christmas.  After the holidays, he went with me to Quilt Expressions, and while I was looking at fabric, he was looking, too.  He found some panels with winter trees on them and said he would like to make a quilt.  I had not seen this coming!  I helped him choose a couple more fabrics to go with the panels.  Later I had him practice cutting 2" strips, out of some unappealing remnants, with my rotary cutter.  I had him practice sewing straight seems on the sewing machine.  I introduced him to Mr. Seam Ripper.  He needs more practice pressing.   I had never used a panel to make a quilt, so I winged it and decided they needed to be squared a little before we started.  We discussed sashing and cornerstones: of which, cornerstones are not my favorite thing.  Well, it all went well and he is very happy with the quilt he made. 

He made this to go in the library on the back of the
small sofa.  It really looks great!

He learned about the walking foot and cheaty binding. Now he wants to be my assistant and help me cut fabric for my quilts.  I have some skill builders in the works for his future!  :)

The One Year Quilt

Actually most of my quilts take more than a year, because I begin them and then begin some other quilt, which I also may not finish because I begin something.  Sometimes I do get the new projects done before the ones I already had begun.  I hope you were able to follow that.  This one I started in January 2016, because I wanted to use up some of my flannel to make room for more regular cotton fabric.  I did get it finished in January 2017! Yeah!  Done in one year.  It is a fabulous soft grown quilt.  I call it a grown quilt, because I just sew two pieces of fabric together and keep adding, so it grows into a quilt.  I did manage to use up all the airplane fabric and some scraps of Spider Man.  I did do a cheaty binding; trimming the backing an inch from the edge, then folding it to the front as a binding.  It looks awesome and is very sturdy.  I like these kinds of flannel quilts because you really can launder the heck out of them and they just keep on being wonderfully soft and functional.

contains cars, airplanes, trains, hocky players, Spider Man, stripes,
solids, and plaids.  Stitch-in-the-ditch mostly.