Anatomy of a Quilt--or, How Many Rooms Does It Take to Make a Quilt!

Finally, finally! I get to tell you the story of my lavender "Tossed Nine-Patch" quilt that I made for my granddaughter Laura's seventh birthday! I took pictures of the process from the beginning with the thought in mind that I would blog all about it with the pictures. This is a long process with lots of pictures. If you are not interested in quilting, you might want to spend your time somewhere else! If you are a quilter, you may even pick up a few new tips! I am excited to share this with you!

Why does anyone make a quilt? As my daughter Jill put it, "It's not because you need a blanket, that's for sure!" We make quilts as a form of artistic expression, putting colors together and with the thought that the person sleeping under it will feel the warmth of our love!

My husband, Ken, laughs and says it is pretty crazy to cut fabric all up in pieces and sew it all back together again! But he knows I love fabric and sewing and applauds my creativity--and sleeps under the quilts!!

This quilt is crazier yet, my dear husband. Not only do you cut up fabric and sew it back together into squares, but then you cut the squares you made into four smaller squares and sew them back together again a different way! The method behind this quilt was fun and intriguing to me. This quilt seemed to flow for me. I usually have a certain amount of frustration sewing a quilt together, but this one was minimal that way. I certainly recommend the pattern to anyone, even a beginner. Eleanor Burns has done a great work in quilting and has been at it for over 25 years. I have a good number of her books and patterns, and her method of teaching is excellent and time-efficient.

I bought this pattern at a quilt demonstration in DuBois last summer put on by Eleanor's sister, Pat Knoechel. During the demonstration which was primarily for another quilt, Pat briefly mentioned and described the method of sewing this quilt together. Bingo! I had to buy the pattern. I also bought the book for the other quilt, but am not ready to tackle that one yet!

So, busy August was nearly over and my garden was a disappointment because of tomato blight. Our son Ross had moved to State College to finish his final two years at Penn State. I decided it was time to get out my lavender fabrics and cut out a quilt to give as a gift for Laura's birthday, which is September 23. Lavender is her favorite color. I used Ross' recently vacated bedroom to do my cutting. Notice the "tutti-fruiti" color walls. Or is it "mango-tango"? Ross painted the room in the colors of his choice when he moved back here two years ago.

In the beginning...the first thing to do is cut strips of fabric five inches wide. A quilt ruler works great for this.
Then, cut the selvalge ends off evenly and cut into five inch squares across.
Keep going with all the fabrics of your choice. I had thirteen fabrics that I used. I didn't bother to count the squares I had, but knew I would have more that enough. I ended up putting some of the lefovers together for a border around the quilt, and still have a plastic bag with a nice sized stack in them for some future project.
I laid them all out on the lid of a plastic storage container, which worked well and moved across the hall to my sewing room (room #2--are you keeping track?)
I am sewing on a Bernina Artista, which I bought from the estate of Ken's Aunt Edna Sekel after she died. I own two Bernina's. The other one is mechanical (this one is computerized) and I love both of them. I always say Bernina sews a beautiful stitch.
I true-Eleanor Burns style, I sew the nine-patch squares together assembly line style. If you aren't familiar with this idea, ask me about it and I will explain it to you. I worked on five of them in my first batch, because I wanted to make some and cut them apart and then sew them back together to see how they looked!
Pressing is very important, and the pattern explais exactly how to do it. In this pattern you are to use the same fabric for every center square of the nine-patch. I used a pastel purple, with really was not very dramatic and didn't show up all that much in the completed quilt. Put one completed square on the cutting mat, and again, using a quilt ruler, cut it carefully into four pieces. Accuracy is important! Notice my central lavender square is now cut into four little squares.
Now, according to the pattern, we rearrange the squares so that two of the little lavender squares are in two of the corners! Again, the pattern gives excellent directions and diagrams.
Now, I have a stack of new blocks!

Now I have sewn together some of these blocks and laid them out on my ironing board so I can see what they look like.

You may have noticed my ironing board in earlier pictures. It is a husband-made add-on for my ironing board which is great for quilting. It is a rectangular piece of plywood, 22" by 60". I saw one at a needlecraft expo 20 years or so ago, called "Big Board". I don't know if they still sell them or not, but when I described it to Ken, it was easy enough for him to make it. It sits on top of the ironing board. Underneath is a frame that goes around the ironing board with a twist-on piece of wood to hold it securely. If you need and want more details, I am glad to supply them to you! It works really well for quilting, and pressing larger pieces of things.

And, this picture above is totally out of place, and I don't know how it got there! And I don't know how to delete if, so here it will stay, I guess!
Fifteen nine-patch squares have turned into fifteen tossed-nine-patch blocks. I laid them out on a guest room bed (room #3!) to see how they will look and how big the quilt actually is. I want it to be for a twin bed, and I don't like skimpy quilts, so looks like I want some borders on it!
I decided to use the white with little lavender flowers on it for the first border. It is five inches wide, like the squares. It will give the quilt a clean, feminine look, I think. I want it to be girlish for Laura. I am not to the point of sewing it on yet, just getting the idea of the look I want.
I still have stacks of squares to sew together! The challenge is to get them arranged so there are no fabrics alike touching each other. That didn't quite happen in this quilt. I have a couple of goofs along that line.
All sewn together.
The border is sewn on now, but not pressed yet. I decided that I still wanted this quilt bigger, so I started sewing my lefover squares together for an additional border.
Here they are string sewn together and ready to be cut apart to make the strips.
I seemed to forget to take some pictures for a little bit! Above shows the quilt with the squares borden on it. We have fast-forwarded to the process of sandwiching the quilt together with the backing on the bottom, then the batting, and then the quilt on top. I use my kitchen island to do this (room #4!). I lay down a cardboard cutting board because I use pins to hold my quilt together.

I wish I had taken pictures of the pinning process. Some quilters say to hand baste the quilt together and some use last safety pins. I use quilting pins. They are longer that ordinary sewing pins. Mine have yellow heads on them which make them easier to see. I, in fact, use them for nearly all my sewing and like them a lot. I pin about every six inches, and it must have worked OK for this quilt because I think I only got one tiny tuck in it, and it was near the edge.

One drawback to all those pins is that you might as well figure you are going to get pin-stabbbed more than once when you are machine quilting! As long as I don't draw blood, I just figure, "oh, well" and go on. Blood means I need to stop for a bit because I don't want blood on the quilt!

You will notice the purple-flowered backing material. This is a fairly heavy-weight sheet. I bought three or four of them one day at a close-out sale of a Wamsutta outlet store, figuring I could use them for quilts someday, and lo and behold, the day has arrived! Interestingly enough, I did not buy anything to make this quilt. Everything was gathering dust in my sewing room!! I have rolled the side edges of the quilt inward, and rolled up the bottom edges, leaving the corner where I want to start my machine quilting exposed. It's time to set up my machine in the dining room (room #5) and get this thing quilted!
The dining room table works well for machine quilting. It helps to have ample table space to my left and behind the machine. I took off the table cloth but left on the plastic table protector to preserve my table top from all the pins I put in! I will be flipping this quilt around a lot!

I am using my previous sewing machine for the machine quilting. This is a New Home Janome Memory Craft 8000 which was my dream-come-true sewing machine in 1994. It has done lots of sewing and is a dear friend of mine! For ordinary sewing, it does not feed properly, and I have pretty much put it out to pasture. But, it will do a good job with its walking foot or darning foot for free-motion quilting.

Getting started on sewing diagonally across the squares...
Okay, let's see where we are at...a few more to go.
Ta da! I have finished the cross-wise quilting! For some strange reason, I enjoy machine-quilting as long as my quilt doesn't fall off the table too many times!!
Now, what about that lavender flower border that I put on? I decided to do some free-motion loop-de-loos on it. They didn't turn out real great, but hey, ya gotta start somewhere! I drool when I watch videos of the beautiful free-motion quilting done on those quilting machine set-ups! Someday....and for the present, I am dreaming about one!

I use the darning foot to make the loops. The next picture shows the foot against a darker fabric so you can see it better.
Wow! We are coasting close to the finish line! And, it's a good thing, because we found out that we are celebrating Laura's birthday on Sunday, September 20, which is three days ahead of her birthday! It sure did keep me on track this last week of sewing the quilt!

On goes the walking foot again to go around the outside borders and X them all.

Hurray! We are coming to the finish line for the machine quilting!
And it is done! Well, except for the binding, that is...
Back to room #1, the cutting room. I have learned a different way of cutting and sewing bias binding together and want to share it with you. Most quilting books show a way of sewing the ends together some way, and drawing cutting lines on the fabric and then cutting it. Ugh, in my book. I cut my bias strips first and then sew them together.

Binding is important on a quilt and subject to wear because we grab the end of the quilt to arrange it over our head on those cold winter nights! Bias wears a little better and sews on easier than straight-grain binding. I also like the bias-look on the edge of a quilt, and often choose fabric with lines in it to enhance that fact. For this quilt, I had over a yard left over of one of the fabics in the quilt. Since it has a square design in the print of it, it will look interesting in the binding.

First of all, fold the fabric on the true bias. If your fabric is 44 inches by 44 inches, the sides would meet, but ours isn't. Our bias fold is at the back of this picture, and the selvage is the white line on the far/lower right.
With the bias fold still at the top, I fold the left flap in about a third of the way.
Then I fold the right flap in about a third of the way, keeping all that bias fold at the top.
Then fold the bottom flap up. This will now create a bias fold at the bottom of the fabric. This way of folding is a variation on a diaper-folding technique, for anyone who uses or remembers cloth diapers! It looks confusing here, but get a piece of fabric and see if you can do it!

I want my bias binding to be four inches wide. Since the first cutting is on a fold, I make that cut two inches.

The next cuts will be four inches. Now I have lots of bias strips of varying lengths. Let's go sew them together.
We sew them together on the straight of grain, which actually is diagonally on the binding. This means that you have to place your pieces together like this:
And if you aren't just sure whether those two pieces will go together, here's anotherr picture to help you:
A bunch sewn together, string-sewn at usual. Back to the ironing board.
Fold in half and press! Don't you just love this big ironing board?

I decided I had better make sure I have enough binding, so I am going to measure it. Sure enough, I have about 400 inches, more than enough for a twin-size quilt. Time to sew it on! I sew mine onto the back of my quilt. I start my sewing about four inches from the beginning of the binding.

When I come back around to that point, I will arrange this piece of binding with the other end.
The pictures above and below show how I sew around the corners. I stop about 3/8" from the end, fold and push a little pleat into the binding back to the edge, and start sewing again. This is easier to show than explain!
Remember that extra I left at the beginning? Now I am approaching it. I fold it out as shown:
and sew the binding over it. Notice in the picture blow that the top-most piece of binding is placed in a little bit from the one below it. This difference will help when we turn the binding around to the front of the quilt.
These next several pictures are duplicates! Sorry! No wonder it took all day to upload these pictures!! I will write again after the duplicates.





Looks like I forgot to take pictures of the topstitching of the binding to the fron of the quilt. I usually use a three-way zigzag stitch. True quilters will handstitch theirs beautifully, but I am not that ambitious. Besides, I think that my machine-sewing is far sturdier than my hand-sewing would be. And my quilts are made to be used ( but not abused, please!)

Aha! Finally, someone comes around who can get behind the camera! Ken took the next three pictures of me while I was finishing the binding on the quilt. I was recovering from the flu when these pictures were taken, and glad I was well enough to be sitting at the machine and finishing the quilt!


And, it is FINISHED! It is 11:05 on Saturday morning, 28 hours before the birthday party!!
A few more pictures of the finished quilt...
hanging over the dining room table and chairs...

and back on our queen bed...This quilt has moved around, hasn't it? Did you count the rooms I used to make it? The answer is five, and this is another room in our house to display it!
Now for the next fun part! Presenting it to Laura! Twenty-six days are making the first cut, the lavender quilt is ready for her birthday (nothing like a deadline to keep me on track!). Here she is getting it out of the gift bag.

Our son, Todd, (Laura's Dad) is tall enough to hold the quilt up for pictures without it touching the ground!
Laura also got this throw as a gift from her parents. It looks like she will be warmed up in lavender and purple this winter!
And I wrap it around her for a special picture..
and her school friend, too!
Fences make great place for quilt pictures
with a proud grandma
or a school friend!

Thanks you for reading the story of Laura's quilt! It was great fun to make and write about! I hope I have inspired you in some little way. And now I am thinking of my next quilt....