WIP: Almost There!

I'm far more of a night owl than an early bird so when Alan had a night out on Friday it was a great opportunity for me to sit and sew. I'd added some applique to one section of the backing fabric for my Star Trek quilt at sewing class on the Monday night and needed to blanket stitch around it. I don't really enjoy this bit as it's one of those tasks that seems to take a long time but you don't really see any progress with the quilt. So Friday evening, I got the kids to bed and sat down and forced myself to get on with it.

I hadn't used the blanket stitch on my quilting machine before so I did a bit of testing on some scrap fabric first. It's ended up slightly wider than I'd have liked but the only way to go narrower was to reduce the stitch length and it seemed to pull the fabric regardless of the tension setting.

I decided that while I had my machine out I might as well piece the back. Another job I dislike. One of the big selling points of jelly rolls for me is that it saves me from having to cut across the full width of fabric. Where I have to cut big bits of fabric I usually get Alan to help hold the ruler with me so it doesn't move while I'm cutting. I didn't really want to put off finishing the back as I'd always prefer to leave a project ready for doing a nice part so I'm keen to pick it up again so I managed without his help.

I also managed to get the quilt basted after climbing up into the alcove at almost 1am to find some wadding. I must remember not to baste quilts at that time of night (morning!) again as I managed to stick wadding to my slipper.

Yesterday I had to wait in for a courier. As the kids were playing really nicely I thought I'd make a start on the quilting. The hardest part was choosing thread, particularly with the really bright and very different colours in the quilt top. I ended up just following my original instinct and chose a variegated Gutermann Sulky. Despite using Gutermann thread for all my piecing and dressmaking, it's not one I really consider for quilting. The Sulky thread was part of a pack I got for Xmas with some fat quarters and 3 reels of thread. I'll definitely consider it in future as it was really nice to work with and I was really pleased with the outcome.

I didn't want to do really heavy quilting and wanted to stick to straight line quilting. I chose a wadding that could be quilted up to 10" apart. My blocks were slightly under this so I was able to quilt next to each line of sashing. Then I quilted around each rectangular picture to frame the image. The cushion was fairly similar.

I then cut out two bits of fabric to make an envelope back for the cushion. I used a decorative stitch for one of the hems to give it a nice finish. I stayed up until 1am making the binding and sewing it onto the front of the quilt. Today I've started hand sewing it to the back.

I'm hoping to get it finished this evening and I might get out at some point to get a cushion pad. And that will be two items ticked off the list of UFO's.

Hopefully some finished object pictures one day this week.