I mentioned last week that I would have another finished quilt to show off with nearly identical fabrics. Two different people asked me to make baby boy quilts in blues and browns, and I’m all about efficiency, right? This second one was a custom order from my husband’s aunt, who I knew we’d be seeing in Florida this weekend, so it was the perfect time to finish it.
I think I liked the no-triangle zig-zag pattern even better the second time around. For some reason, it didn’t feel like it took as long as the first time, and I would definitely make it again at some point. I did make it a hair smaller, starting with 2.75″ strips instead of 3″, only because it made fitting the backing and binding a little easier (the last time, I just barely had enough with a crib-sized batting). The finished size pre-washing was about 42×52″. The solid blue on the front is Kona Cotton in either Sky or Cloud (again, not that I would be smart enough to write such things down). The solid brown on the back is Kona Cotton in Espresso (that one I’m pretty sure of) with a strip of little squares of the prints from the front..
I fell in love with two new things in the making of this quilt. The first is basting spray. Thank you so much to the people who suggested it when I was having such trouble with my walking foot. It was nothing short of awesome. The process wasn’t too hard, and I added a few pins just for my own peace of mind. There was dramatically less distorting. Arguably this was a more forgiving style of straight-line quilting, in that there were no crossed/overlapping lines, I still think it was a major improvement and will definitely use it again. And I was really happy with the way the blue quilting lines showed up on the dark brown backing.
The second new love was one of necessity. As I was packing everything up to take to Florida to finish, I could not for the life of me find brown thread. As anyone with toddlers can attest, things tend to go missing. So I grabbed some cream-colored thread and threw it in the bag, and figured it was time to make the switch to ladder stitch for my binding. Holy crap. I was doing little tiny stitches before that were hard to see, but I was a little worried at how well they’d hold things down, and they were still, technically, visible. This thing is no-joke invisible! I mean you have to really look closely and start pulling at things to see the stitches. And I didn’t find that it took all that much longer than what I was doing before, so another win.
Sewing has to go on the back burner this week as I need to use the precious naptime to frantically price and tag three huge bins full of clothes and other stuff for my Moms of Twins Club’s semi-annual tag sale. But as soon as I finish, I’ll jump right back in!
