I've taken a small hiatus from the
Star Quilt, because my neighbor and I have been taking a Beginning Quilting class at
Valli & Kim and in class we are making a rail quilt! Rather than getting stressed about working on 2 quilts at the same time, I've decided to focus my (limited) energy on one thing at a time.
Each week, we learn a new step.
WEEK 1
Put together to top of the quilt.
Step 1: I learned how to properly cut all the pieces for the quilt.
Looking back on how I did it with the Star Quilt I realize I was SOOO off. It is very precise work, this piecing business. It makes me a bit nervous if I'm going to be able to make all my star blocks line up when I get to that point - but I'll worry about that later.
Step 2: Once I cut the 3 fabrics into strips, we learned how to sew an "exact" 1/4 inch seam... which I am not great at.
This isn't going to be a perfect quilt, I'm learning! I keep telling myself, the wonkiness is what makes it homemade and I guess if I wanted another perfect quilt I'd go buy one at Pottery Barn :) It is a lot of fun though.
Step 3: I sewed the 3 different long strips of fabric together, in the same sequence, then cut them into squares.
Again, these had to be exact squares because we want the quilt to come out looking more like a rectangle than a triangle, and it will look a lot nicer when we sew all the pieces together and the lines match up.
Step 4: I laid out the pattern for the quilt.
With a rail quilt, you can make a couple different twists to certain blocks and have a completely different pattern. I thought I wanted to do "cross" type rail quilt, where there were little + signs going through the quilt, but with it being so small, I just didn't like how it looked.
Can you see the "crosses?" Some are blue and some are green.
If I had sewn the brown polka dot on an outer part of the block, I think the crosses would have been much more obvious.
I ended up going the traditional way, and made it look more like a staircase (see below.)
Step 5: I sewed the blocks together horizontally into long strips.
I sewed block 1 and 2 together first, then block 3 and 4 together, then added block 5 to the 3/4 section and then sewed block 3/4/5 to block 1/2 to make a long row that is five blocks wide.
I repeated that all the way down the 7 rows following the correct "rail" pattern until I had 7 long strips.
Step 6: I then sewed the long strips together to make the top of the quilt.
This was so much fun for me because I'm OCD. Pinning and trying to get all the points to match up perfectly really makes me happy... when it works! I read books on how to do it and watched a few online tutorials, and it worked! They were nearly perfect and I was tickled!
I wish I had done a better job taking pictures of all these steps, but when you're in class, the time just goes by so fast! I didn't think to document it along the way.
I was shocked about how much I learned at the first class. It is amazing all the precise detail and measurement that goes into making a quilt the "right way" - If I hadn't gone to that class I would never had learned so many new little tricks!
The best way I can equate making a quilt versus the way I normally sew is as if you were going to compare the differences between a baker and a cook. A baker measures every teaspoon, cup, ounce and they are very very precise. I cook throws in more salt until it tastes good. I'm a cook. I'm trying to be more like a baker. :)
WEEK 2
We learned all about how to add a double border.
Foolish me, I thought, how hard can it be? It's just a simple border. Measure the quilt, cut a couple strips, sew it on to the top of the quilt and voila - done.
WRONG.
There is a lot of measuring, adjusting and averaging involved... shocking, I know. We added two layers of borders and now that I've done it, it really doesn't seem like rocket science, but getting my head around the concept was tricky.
I got so excited before the class that I roughed it out to see what it would look like.
Surprise, I'm impatient!
Step 1: We measured the "left" and "right" sides of the quilt at the top, middle and bottom.
The goal was to see how "square" the quilt was after it was pieced together.
As you can imagine, my measurements were not all the same - the top was bigger than the bottom by 1/4 of an inch!
Step 2: We trimmed a little at the top (an 1-16 to 1/8 of an inch on each side), and eventually tried to get it as close to the same measurement as the bottom width without destroying the blocks.
Step 3: We measured again after we trimmed down the rectangle.
We took the average of the three measurements and used that figure as the length of the border strips.
Step 4: Pin, Pin, Pin
Because the length of the border strip and the quilt aren't exact, I spread out any extra fabric I had on the border over the whole quilt top by pinning it evenly.
Step 5: Sew on the left and right sides of the border.
Step 6: Measure the width of the top and bottom of the quilt. Taking 3 measurements again, top middle and bottom.
Step 7: Repeat steps 2 - 5.
Step 8: Put on the second exterior border... repeating the whole process again until it's done.
Ta Da! Here is what she looks like now:
Please excuse the wrinkles :)
So next week we're learning about batting... how to dart and I think we may start quilting. Or at least, we will be practicing quilting on a test piece so we don't mess up all the goodness that we've already made. Then after that we will do the binding and I think that's the last of it.
I learn so much in these classes - it has been so much fun. And our teacher Kim is just a sweet as can be. Hopefully these babies won't arrive before I can get this one finished but if they do that's okay too.
In baby news: we had a sonogram this week and I passed my Glucose test! I'll post a real update on that another time to let you know what's going on there. But all is good. I've been put on work and travel restrictions so that is really boring, but all for good reasons.
Love you all. Off to feed these little twins and rest a bit :) They're hungry and so is their mama.
xoxo, CB.
