Sunday, February 18, 2018

One Quilt, One Day, Start to Finish

Yesterday I made this quilt:


OK, so it is only 11" x 13" but it's finished!

The backstory:

Our guild, the Heritage Quilters of Huntsville, is having a little contest this year:

1. Check a book out from our large library
2. Make a quilt from the book
3. Bring the quilt to a guild meeting
4. Fill out a slip
5. At the end of the guild year, August, two people will win $50 gift certificates to my favorite shop, Patches & Stitches .

I had known about this for a few months with no plans to participate. At the last guild meeting, Thursday, the Librarian made a pitch for this because, more than half way through the year, there was only ONE participant, the Librarian herself.

So the next day I was in Patches on other business and since our library is housed there, I checked out this book, Little Handfuls of Scraps  by Edyta Sitar:


That night I looked all through the book--there are several designs I really like in it. I selected the one I wanted to make, Sophie, page 66.

The next day, yesterday, I was ready to begin about 11 a.m. I selected all the fabrics from a shoebox full of reproduction prints I keep close at hand. All the pieces were cut out and assembled on a flannel board I use to take blocks ready to sew from the cutting table to the  machine:


I sewed and  pressed, took a short lunch break, sewed and pressed some more and  had the top done pretty quickly. I cut the batting and backing to size, ready for quilting.

My plan was to hand-quilt it as I needed a hand project for evening sewing. But first I would stitch-in-the-ditch on the Bernina Q20 sit-down longarm machine. That didn't take long so I thought, I'll just machine quilt the entire thing. That didn't take long either, less than 45 minutes to fill the squares with "orange peel" designs, using curved rulers.

Next, it was time to trim it, cut and create the binding, cut and create the hanging sleeve, and attach the binding and sleeve by machine.  By 3 p.m. it was done. Last evening I hand-stitched the binding and sleeve in place and this morning I hung it in the hallway.



So, one quilt, one day. I sent an email to the Librarian to let her know her pitch was heard by at least one of us. She was happy. Next month I'll take it to show and put my name in the hat.

Let's Quilt!

Barbara

9 comments:

  1. Wow! Awesome challenge and what a great quilt. I love my local library and all the books it offers through the library system. Great job!

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  2. Adorable quiltlette and an inspirational "story" of your planning process and speedy completion. I'm thinking I should clear my agenda in the near future and try to make a quiltlette in a day. Obviously, it CAN be done. :-)

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  3. Wonderful, Barbara. Great how you have shared your process, and the result is a precious little quilt.
    That book has some lovely wee quilts in it. I am following along with Wendy (The Constant Quilter) in trying to make one little quilt a month. I had determined that if I ran out of projects already in the works to finish up each month, this book would give me the direction I needed. You have confirmed that in my mind.

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    1. Might be a private challenge in there for you and me...

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  4. Well, once again, you have inspired me to give it a go and make a small quilt for the library contest. I feel like such a copy cat when I read your blog :). One day I may have an original quilt thought of my own! Thanks for the inspiration.

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    1. Happy to inspire--our library is full of good books with great ideas, I'm sure you'll find something you want to do.

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