I made a quilt!

Subtitle: What I did on my summer vacation

If you know me in the live-action world, and have talked to me lately, my answer to “what have you been doing?” has been “not much”.

I lied.

I have been quilting lately. A LOT. But to divulge that makes me seem really nutty. And obsessed. And perhaps a bad mother. Because people say “I don’t know how you find the time to sew!” I do – the miracle of nap times and Cartoon Network. Letty takes really long naps – 2 1/2 hours or so, and I let the boys watch TV the entire time. So I Can Sew.

A few months ago I was dreaming of a new duvet cover for our bed, and I decided to make it myself. It didn’t matter that I’ve never made bedding, didn’t know where to buy bedding-quality fabric, and had never had an interest in quilting. An obsession was born.

So I found a pattern I liked: the Just Sweet Enough quilt in Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. The quilt in the book was mostly white, which was what I wanted. It was also for a small girl: pastel and twin-sized, not something I wanted so I made tweaks to both. I needed something queen-sized and something not quite so pastel.

I found fabric I liked and got to work.

I got busy with my rotary cutter (a new purchase) and was shocked at how much cutting was involved. Good grief! Quilting is more about cutting and ironing than actual sewing. At least in the beginning.

Once I cut all the pieces out, I put them all together. Like a big fabric puzzle.

Once the top was pieced it was time to assemble the “quilt sandwich”. At this point I started to panic a little. Do you know how big a queen size quilted duvet is? 96 inches square. Who was the idiot who decided that a quilt for the largest bed in the house would make a fantastic learning piece? Oh yeah, me.

So anyway I taped my backing fabric to the floor, smoothed out my flannel and pieced top and began to pin it all together. Then realized I needed more safety pins than I had. Like 100 more. So being the lazy and inexperienced person I am, I thought “oh, I’ll just hand baste it together. How long can that take?” Hours. It took 3 hours. Did I mention this thing is big?

Now I was ready to quilt. I did spend a day running around town looking for a walking foot for my machine. Turns out they don’t make one for the 70s model Kenmore. Something about a custom shank or something. Anywho…

I quilted. I straight-line quilted every 3 inches, for those of you who know about such things. (have I mentioned the largeness of this project?)

Then I was done. I bought some sheeting and made the quilt into a big pillowcase with an opening at the bottom to put the duvet in. That way we can use this as a quilt in the summer, and if it ever gets cold again (I have my doubts), we can just put our duvet in. I’m really happy with how it looks. I even made pillowcases to match (I know – overachiever).

duvet opening

pillowcase detail

And that’s it. Quilt completed and blogged. I think I’ll go to bed now.