Math Crafting: One week, two quilts (part 1)

This quilt is for Cooper. He is currently 6 months old, but I believe he gets older every day.

This was purchased as a package--it included the pattern and the material, which was mostly fat quarters, except for what was to be used as the border. There were 9 fat quarters and 1.5 yards for the border. The pattern made a crib-size quilt measuring 46.5" x 58.5" with border.

I just love all the colors

I cut the fat quarters into 3.5" strips--at least 4 strips from each fat quarter. Then I cut one 2" strip from each fabric. The 2" strips were turned into 2" squares, and then paired up and sewn into 2x2 fabric squares.

Sew pairs of squares right sides together with 1/4" seam

As my mom always says, "sew and press, sew and press"

Sew two pairs of squares together to make 2x2 squares
Then press, of course
Aren't they cute?

The pattern came with this really great placement diagram.

All I had to do now was figure out what fabrics I wanted to go where on the diagram...way easier said than done. I laid my strips out by color, because that's how I roll. I didn't want too many reds next to each other, or too many busy fabrics too close, etc. I looked at sections of four rows at a time and folded the strips to the lengths specified by the diagram until I was satisfied with that section. Then I cut the strips to the correct length and returned the extra back to their respective piles.

Rotary cutters are awesome, btdub, but make sure you have a mat that's big enough...I did not

I left everything right there on the floor and went to bed.

Not.

That would make too much sense at midnight.

Surely I could sew all this up before I go to bed.

So I started sewing the strips...right sides together! working down each strip until there were 12 perfect little strips. I made sure to leave everything in its place unless I was working on it, because there was no way to figure out where everything went if I didn't.

(That's a lie. I numbered each fabric and wrote down the corresponding number on that handy dandy diagram. I'm a math teacher. I like numbers.)

I sewed the first two strips together.

Then the second two.

Then the third two, etc. until I had 6 strips of 2 smaller strips.

Repeat.

Now I have 3 chunks of 4 strips.

I really did stop here, because I was falling asleep at the sewing machine.

I'm really glad I did, because Mom (Mom the Amazing is her full name) had some ideas on how I should proceed.

The first great idea she had was to use flannel as the backing and to not use any batting. Makes for a super soft and snuggly quilt.

The second great idea she had was to sew the chunks I had directly onto the backing.

So I laid everything out on her handy craft table, centered the middle chunk on the blue backing, matched the right chunk on top of it (right sides together), and sewed all three layers together. When finished, I flipped the right chunk right side up. Repeat with center chunk and left chunk.

A tip: sew the same direction on the quilt each time, from "top" to "bottom," even though this isn't always sewing-machine-convenient, if your machine pulls any, it will at least pull it the same direction, instead of being wop-sided (which I'm pretty sure is not a word).

The picture shows this process of sewing directly onto the backing with the border. I cut the border into 5.5" strips and sewed them on top to bottom, top to bottom, then left to right, left to right.

Yay! Done! not.

What's next? My first attempt at the quilting machine.

If you don't know what a quilting machine is, they generally have a longer arm (space between needle and the rest of the machine), so there is room for more fabric, and they do not have feed dogs (which push your fabric backwards), so the fabric will move any direction you choose.

Looks like I know what I'm doing, right? Pictures can lie.
Cool gloves, though.

Spent 15 minutes on that machine.

Spent and hour ripping out all the stitches created by it.

Then Mom had excellent idea numero tres: Go to bed. Don't try to learn something new after midnight.

Good idea, Mom. See you tomorrow.

I actually took a break on this quilt at this point and started piecing the other one. I found that more therapeutic than trying to do something I didn't know how to do and therefore wasn't good at and therefore had no motivation to do. Oh well.

When the second quilt caught up with and passed this one (see part 2), I figured out how I wanted to quilt this one. I realized that plan was half the battle.

I decided to go for a wavy, racetrack-y pattern that encompassed the whole quilt face. I spread the quilt out on Mom's handy crafting table and drew the quilt pattern off in chalk so I could see it. So much easier than whatever I tried to do before. No stitches removed this time.

The border had all these little circles on it, and some of them were blue. So I swirled around the border and circled the blue circles with the quilting machine. Turned out pretty durn cute.

In the meantime Mom the Amazing had cut 2.5" stops out of the same fabric as the border to use as the binding and ironed it for me.

I put the walking foot (it's a fancy foot on the sewing machine that basically matches the feed dogs for the top of the fabric, too, so everything gets fed through the machine smoothly) on the sewing machine for the binding.

If you've never sewn binding on before, it's tricky to explain:

Sew the binding on the top of the quilt (right sides together) all the way around. When you get to a corner, you sew 1/4" from the edge, then fold the binding at a 45° angle so that it is in line with the next edge. Hold your finger on that fold, then fold the binding back down onto the new edge, right sides together. Keep sewing.

When you get back to where you started, fold the binding over and around to the back of the quilt. Fold under the rough edge. The binding should be the same width front and back. Then sew all the way around again--stitch in the ditch (sew in the seam between the binding and the quilt on the front, but make sure you catch all the binding from the back with your stitches).