Sister's Paisley quilt - Final

I've written several blogs about the making of this paisley quilt for my sister, Colleen Adams Wilson.  It is a huge quilt (for me now), and I swear every time I make one that I will not make a big one again.  But... I did it anyway.  Because she's my sister and I had never made a quilt specifically for her.

It took almost a month of daily quilting to get it done and my shoulders and neck ached at the end of every day.  I didn't swear, well, OK, just a little, as the quilt moved a jag here and there when I didn't want it to.  Any my grand idea of quilting it with navy blue or dark blue thread didn't pan out at all.  I had to tear out some stitches and re-quilt some areas.  I know, I know, you're not supposed to point out the errors and frustrations on your quilts.    What I did like was thinking about my sister most of the time I was making her quilt.

I have a sit down Innova quilting machine, which is basically a huge sewing machine without the feed dogs.  In order to support the weight of the quilt, I put 3 tables around my quilting machine and sat kitty corner to the needle.  It worked great and I still love my long arm.   Here's a picture of the quilting in progress:

Most of the time, I plan to do continuous line quilting so that I don't have to stop, start and tie knots.  However, on this quilt, I did a lot of stopping and starting and tying knots because of the way that I designed the quilting motifs.  My trick to keep me from getting bored while I tied the knots was to sit in the room with either an audio book downloaded from the library, or to play podcasts, or to lose myself in a Pandora station that was soothing.  I loved hearing Tom Hanks read out loud his short stories, "Uncommon Type".  I also really liked the book, "Milkman", by Anna Burns.  The podcasts that I listened to were TED talks, This American Life, New York Times Book Review, Threads, and a few gardening ones. 

I washed the quilt when I was done.  This was to get rid of all of the markings, the water soluble foundation and glue used during construction.  I was just a bit nervous when I dunked the whole thing into the tub, and watched it to make sure I didn't get color running.  (Adding 2 color catchers gave me courage.)  Then it was laid flat on the carpet and blocked to finish the drying process.  It helped to turn up the heat in the house a couple of degrees.  Here's what the living and dining room looked like while it was drying. (The quilt is between 2 sheets).  I'm so glad we have a large multipurpose room so that the furniture can be moved around to suit its use.

And here is the finished quilt.

Colleen's Paisley quilt by Joanne Adams Roth 2019

close up of quilting

I hope my sister likes it!

Sister's quilt - Part Two

This is a continuation of the blog I wrote about the design and idea for a blue and light quilt for my sister, Colleen Wilson.

I dove right in and cut all the background pieces as 13" squares.  Over-sizing the background allowed me to applique the paisley pieces or do trapunto quilting and then trim the squares to the hexagon shapes.  I like to do the trimming after I do the applique, just to make sure the blocks haven't shrunk during all of the stitching (which always happens for me).  For this hexagon quilt especially, I want to preserve the edges that are on the bias until just before I sew them together.

I've appliqued 6 navy blue paisley pieces onto the background, using my machine applique method with the dissolving foundation.  I pulled out all my embroidery supplies, which had been pining away for attention, and got to work.  I've usd blues and tans and whites, plus some embellishment supplies.  I even snuck in a little bit of purple, and plan to sneak in a tiny bit of lime green.  It wouldn't be a quilt from me if it didn't have a little of my personality showing through.

Here are they are:

I hope you are like where this quilt is heading. I know that I do.  Just not that sure I'm totally on board with making a queen-sized quilt after all my fun small ones.   Nevertheless, it feels really good to make something that someone special in your life wants.  And a fellow quilter and sister is just the best combination.

I hope you have friends and relatives that like your quilts too!