Recent Quilting Adventures

Back in 2009, I have finished my second ever quilt.  The workmanship of the "elephant quilt" was not too great, but it was my own design, and I was (and am) quite proud of it.

My finished Elephant Quilt (2009)

This past year, almost two years later, I tackled another quilt.  Rather than trying to come up with a design, I decided to follow instructions from  One Block Wonders: One Fabric, One Shape, One-of-a-Kind Quilts book by Maxine Rosenthal.  (Stay tuned for my review of the book.) 

Making the quilt went something like this:

 

I "shredded" 4 yards of fabric into 600+ unilateral triangles (648 triangles, to be precise). 

648 triangles (plus some scrap fabric)

In the course of the next two weeks I sewed the triangles into 100+ hexagons.  (Honestly, they were really half hexagons pinned in the middle.)

Hexagons

The next step was particularly entertaining--deciding how to arrange the hexagons.  This part was so much fun that even Nick got involved, and we spent several evenings arranging and rearranging the hexagons.  (In the end we have decided that the process is pretty much infinite.)

Hexagons

We were taking care of a tiny adorable and most rambunctious dog, Rascal, right when it was time for me to make the quilt "sandwich"--pin the backing, the filling and the top layers all together.  Rascal really wanted to participate.

Rascal is helping me with the quilt
(Don't worry--I washed the quilt when I finished it)

Then I decided that I just have to do "free motion" quilting on this quilt.  So I put together several flannel baby blankets to practice the technique on them.  In the end doing free motion quilting on the quilt turned out a bit easier because it was much stiffer than the baby blankets.

The quilt "stuffed" into my new machine!

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the finished quilt, because I finished it literally hours before gifting it to my friend.