Quilt for Donald

I love pre-cuts.

There I said it...

I love pre-cuts.

They are a lazy person's dream come true.

This quilt is made with a Jelly Roll.  I purchased it through the

Missouri Star Quilt Company

A Jelly Roll consists of

42 strips of fabric

that are 2.5" wide

and the width of the fabric long.

They usually contain most...

if not all of the fabric in that line.

 They are great..

I have several of them that I can't wait to use! 

I started looking around for ideas for a jelly roll and of course I went to MSQC first.  I found a couple tutorials on the fence rail pattern.  This is the one I based my quilt on. 

http://youtu.be/HA-ihp1Gp8M

I started out by cutting my strips and watching a great movie at the same time...

Threw them all in a bowl.....

and started sewing them together....

blue to tan...

Lots of strips...

That need to be pressed.....

Decision time....  

the beige to the tan, 

or the beige to the blue.... ???

the tan wins!

Next I trimmed them down to be square

and ended up with a nice sized block

 with bonus border material to spare!

I really really love this design wall....

and it was free... even better.... 

I was all prepared to buy batting...

 and foam insulation boards...

 and get all Pinterest on my wall, ...

when I saw a Quilty video

 and Mary said all nonchalantly... 

use a tablecloth.... 

what do ya know.... 

its awesome... 

it works... 

its huge and I already had it....

FREE is for me!!!  

Now my blocks are sewn into rows....
but not yet sewn together... 

Next its on to pinning and sewing the rows together.... 

its starting to come together now... 

and making sure to nest my seams....

And next thing you know...
I have the start of my quilt top... 

wonky as it may be... 

it's got character that's for sure.

I bought over 4 yards of my backing fabric so that I would have enough for a border

and after all the cutting and pinning

 and sewing and pressing.... 

we have our border!  

I'm starting to think,

this might just come out ok...

Remember the scraps from the blocks?

Here they are...all nice and pressed

so i didn't bore you with sewing a bunch of three inch seams... 

we skipped right to pinning the scrappy border!! 

and its attached...

Pressing.... again....

Trimming....again....

and it's time to go to the kitchen 

and make myself a sammich.... 

Backing fabric... right side down

Batting.... both larger than the quilt top...

and then the quilt top

and you have yourself a quilt sandwich...

There might be an advantage to procrastinating... 

Not that I have been procrastinating, on this project

but in my mind... if I had the time...I definitely would have procrastinated because of this next step

Quilting... this is my weak point... trying to sew a straight line is nearly impossible for me... 

this is my third quilt... 

My third attempt at quilting something so large

and I think it came out the best so far

I started in the corners of the quilt and with my 6x24 ruler I started drawing my lines with my Mark Be Gone marker.  My intention was to create an X through each and every block... 

It took a lot of line drawing...

I forgot to take more pics of my lines...

But here they are sewn

not too bad... it looks good...

Very good... 

See...

It's binding time!

I cut my strips to 3" for this quilt 

I didn't want to run into problems like I have before

I attached the binding to the back side of the quilt

with about a 1/2" seam

 Look Mom...No Clips!!

When I attached the binding I started it in the middle of the long side

leaving about a 10" tail.... 

now that I made it around the quilt... 

this is where I needed to make them meet.

I trimmed off most of the excess binding and clipped it down

 then opened the seam of one end.

This created a little pocket for me to tuck in the other end of the binding

I clipped it down again and ran it through the machine.

One time all the way around... turned it over... flipped the binding to the front... 

and sewed it all around again, and I was done...

 it was a breeze... so easy...and now she's done...

I really like the way this one came out... and so did my step dad Donald... and that's all that counts!!!

Thanks for reading....

P.S. I started this quilt on 9/8/13 and finished it just in time for Christmas on 12/22/13

A Quilt For My Mommy

My mother told me several times since she seen my first quilt, that she always wanted to quilt.... little did she know that I was also making one for her!!!

Here it is....

The fabric is from Missouri Star Quilt Co. 

and is called Jubilee 

I used a Jelly Roll and a Charm Pack.

The pattern is also from MSQC 

and the wonderful Jenny!

Garden of Eden Quilt

So easy to do... just frame your charm pack with the jelly roll strips...

I cut two 5" strips and sewed them to opposite sides of the square

 Ready to set the seams and press them open 

Same thing for the long side... 

cut your fabric to 9" 

and attach to the remaining sides of the block

 see those wonderful blue strips of awesomeness on my machine??  They are called Sewing Edge from QTools and I will never sew another 1/4 seam without them.... they keep your fabric aligned so that you maintain that perfect seam... they are awesome!!!  

you can check them out here:

Sewing Edge Tool

now I am attaching the long strip to the long side...

 its always better to sew with your seams side up... 

this way you can be sure to sew over them neatly...

How do you like that design wall.. thank you backside of table cloth...

the blocks are accumulating... 

but I'm not liking them right now...

So I decided to kick it up a notch 

and turn the squares on an angle... 

Doesn't that look better???

I just started sewing them together in rows

 from left to right.... 

all the pretty blocks sewn into rows...

 and here is where it got a little tricky.... 

I sewed the rows together... 

but as you can see

 I had to line them up to make it look right... 

 but that didn't always work out as planned....

that top block wasn't supposed to be there

break out the seam ripper... 

move some blocks around... 

 and I'm back in business....
the rest of it came together nicely

First part of the quilt top is (almost) done!!!

I wasn't sure what I was doing to do with this ... so I just trimmed it even.....

Next came the borders...
I started with a border of white

  

I really need to figure out how to take better pics... here I added the blue border and started making the pieced border...

I started by sewing my leftover strips together...

Then I trimmed them up and cut them to strips

sewed them all together and pinned them to the quilt top....

Repeat for all the sides and my quilt top is finally completed!!!

Now to make the sandwich..

layer one is the backing fabric

layer two is the batting

layer three is the quilt top.

The backing fabric needed to be sewn together

Look at that seam.. nice job huh?

My quilt is just a little too big for my backing fabric...
 I need to trim the border a bit

All better....

My Doubting Thomas friend didn't think this was big enough... 
I had to show her it was just fine...

This is my least favorite part of the project

Quilting

I wish I was better at it.

I really do.

This is the pattern I chose

L's all over the quilt

I got out my Mark Be Gone pen and my ruler and starting marking ....

Following the lines...

Lot of work moving this thing around.... 

All Quilted !!!!

If you look real close you can see the sewn lines... 

Last and Least is the binding... 

I did not like the results....

Here are a few pics..

:(

When machine binding... 

sew the selvage edge of your binding 

to the selvage edge of the backing side of your fabric...

when you are done you wrap the binding to the top of the quilt and stitch all the way around...

All done... I didn't take a pic of the binding... I didn't care for the way it came out.. I didn't care anymore... I threw it in the washer and dryer and called it a night.

Here she is... 

My second quilt....

Given to my mom for Christmas 2013

I am glad for this to be complete.

It was a lot of work.

My mom loved it... 

worth every second ....

Thanks For Reading 

Quilt Started on October 28, 2013 and completed on December 21, 2013