When I was pregnant with Connor, I made each child a generously-sized baby blanket. Sadly, they've outgrown them. Loving to cuddle in blankets as much as me, both children have started pilfering mine. Of course, this is totally unacceptable, so I got busy on making them new ones to better fit their "big kid"' bodies. :)
For Grace, I decided a large rag quilt would be fun and funky. Not long ago, I came across a pattern on the Moda Bake Shop that suggested using another 5x5 piece of fabric as the batting and forgo traditional batting altogether. Having already made several rag quilts, I though this sounded like a great time-saver. Clearly, I was mistaken.
What I failed to consider is that the "batting" fabric will also show through in the ragging to the front. Heedless to this detail, I randomly used extra pieces as batting. Unfortunately, everywhere the hot pink and brown pieces are used, they show through fairly predominantly on the pastel front. This wasn't my biggest regret, though. The nail-in-the-coffin was the extra piece of fabric I had to cut through on every single seam for the rag effect. What the hell? Who ever thought this would be a great idea? More importantly, how did I not consider this before I had the whole thing assembled? Sigh. Another lesson learned.
On the bright side, the quilt is still completely adorable and cuddly cute!
I had so much fun making the Batman strip quilt a few months ago that I decided to duplicate the project with similar fabrics for Connor. Though Connor's first choice would have been Star Wars, such fabric did not exist. So, he chose Superman. Much to my chagrin, as I was hand-sewing the binding, I learned that Star Wars fabric is just days from release. Really? What are the odds?! What's that saying? If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all? :)
When I was first contemplating the project, I was thinking it would be quilted on a mid-arm so I went with a minkee back. As can happen, plans changed along the way and I decided to try quilting it myself on my machine. I was pretty intimidated and looked for advice from a couple quilters with more experience. Though my original thought was to meander, both suggested using a walking foot for straight-line stitching and leaving large areas of space to prevent puckering.
I'm so glad I sought their advice! Though the picture above makes it look like the back is incredibly loose, it really is much smoother than it appears and there is absolutely no puckering. Yippee! Boy, oh, boy does minkee stretch. I think I will wait until I get a mid-arm to try this again...unless Grace requests one, too. If so, at least I'll have a better idea of what I'm in for an how to tackle the project.
So, all is well that ends well. Both kids received their new quilts, (which they love), I am now the sole occupant of my blanket, I finished my second UFO for Moneik's Challenge, and I learned a bunch of new things...again.
