My Rapid Decline into Old-Ladyhood... part III, the final hurrah.

Once I finished the top of the quilt, I was pretty excited... then I realized, that was only half the battle. I made a back of the quilt, which probably could have been simpler except I had a lot of fabric that I could cut up, and didn't want to waste it. So, I made the whole thing out of 12x12 squares, with 2 stripes of color to add a little interest.

First step was to spread the entire thing out flat, taping down the sides so there were as few wrinkles as possible. Given that this took the entire available space in my living room (with the coffee table and rug moved and the couches pushed around), this was no easy feat. It is possible the hardest part was keeping Charlotte off of it, because she was pretty intrigued.

Then the next step is to make the "quilt sandwich". So, on top of the backing of the quilt put the batting. I used an 80/20 cotton/poly blend with low loft. Then I put on the top, trying to center it (not so easy!). Then, I used a little tool my friend Kristen (who also advised on the whole process) loaned me, which is basically like a price gun that shoots a little plastic thing through all the layers to hold them together- alternatively, you can pin it. The gun was pretty fun, though.

 Then, I rolled it up, because the whole thing has to be fed through the sewing machine (no small feat either)! There are a lot of fancy techniques for the actual quilting, but I wanted to go way simple because frankly, I had no idea what I was doing, and by the time everything was sandwiched together, just maneuvering the whole thing through the machine was tricky.

 I decided to just sew along each seam- my stripes were either 4 inches wide (colors) or 2 inches wide (grey) so it worked out (the batting say to quilt every 4 inches to avoid bunching). I didn't manage to sew the same distance from the edge of each stripe, but, it worked out anyways

Then I had to do the edge, which I was kind of worried about. First I trimmed everything so it was the same size. Then, I cut a bunch of strips of fabric about 3 inches wide and connected them (the way this blog showed me). A lot of the descriptions of binding involved hand sewing, until I found this miraculous post saying that you could do it without doing it by hand, so for my first try, I just went with that. I would describe it in detail, but there are about a million posts about doing this, all by people who know more than I do.

 

And here it is... in all its glory....

*drumroll please*

 

And here is the edge, which despite being a design borne of necessity, is actually a part of it I really like.

And, here is the back, made that way purely for cuteness...

The first night sleeping under that quilt, was the best night ever :).

Also, I know you're concerned, but, Charlotte approves...

If you want to see the rest of the series, here is part 1:

http://yellowfishblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-rapid-decline-into-old-ladyhood-part.html

and part 2:

http://yellowfishblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-rapid-decline-into-old-ladyhood-part_14.html