Basting

Last week I finished all the blocks for E’s quilt and started deciding the layout. Above is what I came up with and I thought something wasn’t quite there about it. Showing the picture to my mother, she suggested another dark border around the group of star blocks. Ah ha! So Tuesday I ran out to the LQS and picked an extra navy bit for another border, the backing, and the batting.

I switched the bottom right two blocks and made pieced the extra border. Much better! and more complete looking.

I finished up the quilt top Wednesday and now am basting the layers together (of course with a helper) and thinking about the quilting pattern. Any suggestions? The back is a light tan with blue and red flora (should show the stitches well!) and I have navy quilting thread.

Preparing with a quilt

Serena of Evan Wren Quilting asked if I was going to make a quilt for our soon-to-be-here 6 year old son. My first thought was I’ll never be finished in time! But as I pondered it I realized that if I pieced the top with my machine it might be possible to finish in time depending on when we get him. I suppose if I don’t finish the hand quilting by the time he gets here he might appreciate it more because he’ll witness first hand my efforts for a gift. LOL Hard to say with a little guy though. :-)

So urged by Serena, I looked through a couple quilt books and thought the Union Star Quilt in Civil War Sewing Circle, The: Quilts and Sewing Accessories Inspired by the Era (That Patchwork Place) by Kathleen Tracy was perfect for a young boy. It’s not too big and if I keep to similar colors of blue and red he’ll probably like it. When I first browsed the book it was one of my favorite patterns and I had started setting aside some possible fabrics for it. After some shuffling these are what I came up with.

The last day and a half I’ve spent sewing blocks and have 4 finished and one more cut. I made a mistake on two but I’m probably not going to bother taking it apart and resewing them. I’ve already done some seam ripping to get the first 2 blocks to the right size. The 1/4 inch mark on my machine must be slightly off and made the finished blocks much smaller than should be. Most people probably wouldn’t notice the mistakes anyway especially with 8 more blocks. Would you have noticed them if I hadn’t pointed it out?

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