The Dupioni Quilt, Finally Finished

No, I did not just make this quilt from start to finish.  I did finally finished it in May after it languished in boxes, closets and suitcases for over 10 years.

(Read the story of this quilt here.)

The Race Is On

Despite having a thousand things that I should be doing, I could not resist starting another quilt.

8 squares for the new quilt
(the squares are just laying on top of another fabric)

So the big question is, what will be finished first--the baby or the quilt top.  Stay tuned...

Photo Shoot

My Marine/Whales quilt and I had a photo shoot today.

This is the "front" of the quilt

And here's the back

By the time I finished the quilt last weekend, it was too dark to take photos.  But I believe the quilt truly deserved my camera's attention, especially since it has now to go through the trials of the first machine wash.  I hope it will retain its general appearance, but you never know.

It was really nice of Nick to hold up the quilt while I took the photos.  Apparently it is not cool to be seen in public standing with your arms fully extended, holding up a brightly colored blanket.

Since we are having an unbelievably warm winter, I agreed to shed my cozy coat and be photographed outside too.  And yes, that ever growing basketball in the front keeps me a lot warmer than I would be otherwise.

33 and a half weeks

I have now shifted from reading about pregnancy and baby development to reading about birth.  I am starting to feel like a ticking bomb...

What I Did Last Sunday

Yesterday, my first planned task was to "sandwich" the Marine/Whale quilt I have been working on.  I already had the top and backing made.  All I had to do was to iron the batting, and then layout and pin the three layers together.  Simple enough, right:?

This one task took me almost 6 hours!  And I was exhausted when I was done.

Top, batting and backing are now all pinned together,
and the quilt is ready to be quilted!

It turns out that it is hard work to crawl on the floor on all fours, constantly getting up, and going back down, with all the extra weight mainly concentrated in my abdomen.  I should not have been surprised.

31 Weeks

Last Friday, I tried to casually hop on a counter top (just like a kitchen counter) in conference room in a meeting at work, because all the chairs were taken.  I did not think twice about it, because I have done this many times.  I tried the "hopping" several times, before it dawned on me that given the extra weight and a change in my center of gravity, I am just not going to be able to do it.  Given that I hopped on the same counter only about a week and a half ago, made this failure even more shocking.

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.