With a neighbor giving birth soon and unable to have a baby shower during the pandemic, she was in need of baby items. In my retirement, I discovered I have 5 (FIVE!) tote boxes of fabric, so I was looking for projects to use it on. And baby quilts are small, so they're easy, right??? Wrong! Here's the saga of my latest craft experience:
First, I reviewed my many quilt books and picked a pattern that looked easy, Flying Geese. Made up of squares which move diagonally across the quilt, I had the opportunity to use lots of fabric and liberty on which colors to use. I sat on my floor and tried different color combinations, then based on how much fabric I had of each color, I modified the design and made my choices.
It allowed me to use lots of fabric scraps, which was one of my goals. I decided to use colors ranging from lavendar to blue to pink to mauve as you moved diagonally across the quilt. The book I was using had a tip for creating squares made of triangles, and since my version of Flying Geese used 1/2 color, 1/2 white for each square, I decided to give it a try.
The tip had you put the two colors of fabric with right sides together, then mark the squares on the back of one fabric. For each square you then mark it diagonally. Before cutting the squares, you sew across the diagonal. Then, you cut the squares and wa-la! Triangles are formed in just the combination you need.
While that seemed simple in theory, I learned a lot about using this technique:
Don't use a regular seam allowance as this will make your triangles too small. I ended up re-marking and re-cutting many of the colors after getting halfway through sewing them.
Mark the wrong side, otherwise you end up sewing them with WRONG sides together!
When sewing the diagonals, don't sew all the way to the edge of the fabric when you're going to end up cutting there. I learned at the very end that I could stop short, but for most of my triangles I had a tiny bit of stitching that I needed to remove with my seam ripper before I could "unfold" the triangles into squares.
When using a fabric with an obvious direction (e.g. stripes), and not doing the cutting all at once, it's easy to get the stripes going one direction for some squares and the other direction for others.
Despite all that, I was pretty pleased with the new triangle technique. Within a few weeks I had all the squares done, with each triangle/pair sewed into a 4x4 square.
I knew that I had ended up with different sized squares, and wanting to make sure my "geese flew straight", I decided to take an extra step and "even up" my squares. I measured them all, determined the "least common size" was 8", and trimmed them all to 8" square using my rotary cutter and mat.
I sewed the squares into rows, using my original sketch to make sure I had the right colors in the right placement. Then sewed the rows together to complete the flying geese effect. Even that wasn't perfect, on one row I got two colors reversed so my "diagonal" was off. I also had one square turned upside down so the triangles weren't in the same corner of the squares. How do I make some of these mistakes??? There were also several places where the seams didn't meet resulting in "gaps". After fixing all this I was ready for the borders.
While I was prepared with a backing fabric, I hadn't thought about a border fabric. Given I was using fabric scraps, it turned out only one of them had enough left to create a border. I used that, and the remainder of my white fabric for the inner border. It turned out I needed to piece the white, but I preferred that to using a different white fabric. Who knew there were different colors of white out there???
After finishing the border, I put all three layers together, and tied them with pearl cotton. I had planned to fold the back over the front to create a finished edge and final border, but it turns out the front was now larger than the back (another mistake!) so I folded the front over the back, turned it under twice, and sewed it by hand. So more learning:
Plan all aspects of the design, including the border fabric.
Measure the backing fabric and make sure the finished design size matches back to front.
I also used flannel for the back, which I've never done before. A friend made my daughter a quilt using flannel and I loved how soft it was, but I noticed this flannel picked up every thread and hair in the area. Hopefully that's not a long-term problem!
Having made a quilt for myself in the past, I learned that after many washings the hand-sewn border began to unravel, so for this one I tied a knot every 5 stitches and kept sewing. At least if it starts to unravel it won't go far!
While the finished quilt is far from perfect, I think it will serve the needs of keeping the new baby (and person holding the baby warm) in the coming months. Sleep tight little one!
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