It's Done!

It was almost a year in the making, it had two major and a couple minor last-minute design revisions, but the Knights of Columbus quilt is finally done! And with 10 days to spare!  :->  

I hung it out on my porch to take a picture... drum roll, please..

HERE IT IS!!!

All in all, I am pretty happy with it.  I posted this picture on Facebook so that that the ladies in charge of the raffle could see that it is done and quit worrying.

Oh, my goodness!  Sixty two 'likes' and 42 comments so far, and I just posted it yesterday.  That may not seem like much, but I was (and am) overwhelmed with gratitude that everyone likes it! 

Now the only thing I have to do is put a label on it.  I tried using the freezer paper method of printing a label, but my printer ate the fabric off the freezer paper and ended up with major heartburn.  After I got it working again, I trotted off to Joann Fabrics to pick up some of the fabric sheets that are INTENDED to be put through the printer. Then, of course, my printer ran out of red ink. <sigh> I grabbed some colored pencils and colored in the part that is supposed to be red, and it looks pretty good.  I ironed it to set the dye into the fabric, and I think it will be OK.  But the problem I have now is that I feel that the label feels like cardboard, and I'm not sure I want to use it.  I bought the June Tailor brand because it said that it is color fast.  If you have any recommendations for other brands or other ways to print a label, please let me know!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Things have been really crazy here!  Between trips with my hubby for Knights of Columbus, trying to keep up with the weeds in garden, and trying to get to the raspberries and blueberries before the birds do, I've been going nuts.

The last time I posted, I think I mentioned that there are now 74 blocks for the raffle quilt, and a diagonal setting is in order.  However, I had originally planned to put borders on it.  To put it bluntly, that ain't happenin'!  

Stepping back a few steps for the newbies - I am making a quilt to be raffled off at this year's Knights of Columbus international convention (a.k.a. "Supreme Convention"), which is being held in Philadelphia at the beginning of August. It is red, white and blue, and is made from modified Sawtooth Star blocks; one block for each jurisdiction where the Knights are active.  The original design was a simple 8x9 setting because there were 72 jurisdictions.  Sometime in May, the powers-that-be decided that one of the jurisdictions in Mexico was too big, so they split it in two.  Without checking with me - can you believe it?  ;->  So after some sleepless nights dreaming about blocks and layouts, I finally come up with a layout for 73 blocks.   All was well until the beginning of June at the annual meeting when they split one of the jurisdictions in the Philippines into 2. AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH! 

More sleepless nights ensued until I came up with the current layout.  If they do any more dividing, I'm going to give up and put the new blocks on the back!  

So I finally finished all the blocks, laid them out on my 'design wall' (living room floor ;->) and realized that I was going to have to quilt it in pieces because it is so big.  So I joined the blocks for the center section together and quilted it using a simple curved design.  Then I sewed the four corner sections together and quilted them using the same design.  To join the sections, I sewed the top portion of each piece in its place by machine, and trimmed and stitched the batting and the backing together by hand.  I then had to quilt over the seamed areas.  That is where I ran into trouble again.

The quilt was getting so big that it would not feed through my sewing machine smoothly.  Sometimes, near the edges, it was fine, but when I had to turn it, it would either jerk and make a jig-jog in the stitching line, or it wouldn't move and I'd have teeny tiny little stitches that didn't match the rest.  

So I decided that, if I want it to look decent, I won't be able to put borders on it. Adding borders that need to be quilted would just exacerbate the problem with wonky stitching.  So I am going to finish the quilting as best I can, then just bind it.  It will still end up about 80 inches square, so it will be a nice queen bed topper.  If I want to make anything bigger than a toddler size quilt from now on,  I am going to take it to my local quilt shop and learn to use their longarm!