It’s been a while! I took a longer-than-anticipated break from writing here but I’m back to share my creations and stories about life as a quilter. I’m starting the reset with an amazing quilt top I just finished. It was a year in the making. I do have some quilts that I began but only worked on in spurts over a long periods and but this is the longest that its ever taken me to work continuously on a top. The results were worth it though and although it still needs to be quilted, the fact that the top is done deserves at least a little brag!

The pattern is called Isla and it’s a twin size – a Julia Wachs design. I’ve designed some quilt tops and I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into creating this one!

My youngest son and his girlfriend (now fiancee) bought a home last year and in the spring I offered to make a quilt as a housewarming gift. They chose this pattern but they wanted a king size so I had to double the blocks. It’s both paper piecing and applique.

They chose the same colours used by the designer, so I got to work. I don’t often buy project-specific fabrics (What Kind of Fabric Buyer Are You?) so I had to go on the hunt for the right ones. The fabrics are from Art Gallery Fabrics and I bought them from Thread Count Fabrics. It was my first time ordering from there but they were the only ones I could find that had all the colours I wanted, the fabric was reasonably priced, and they were in Canada. I was very happy with the service, especially because I had to go back to order more as I miscalculated how much I’d need.

Roadblocks ahead

Unfortunately, my sewing machine wasn’t working at its best and things were slower going than I had hoped for. The machine’s timing was off, among other problems. Sometimes I started stitching and at the end of the seam, I noticed there were no stitches at the start of the seam. Other times, it started just fine. On longer seams it would stitch and then not stitch and then stitch again. I brought the machine to my sewing machine magician but the same thing kept happening after a few uses. (Long story about a very disappointing machine coming up in another post.) So after a while, I gave up on this supposed high-end machine. I turned to my small, inexpensive mechanical Brother machine I had bought to bring to workshops and retreats. It saved the project. It was more awkward, but this machine is the hero in this quilt top story.

As I continued working on the blocks, I quickly realized that this wasn’t going to be a quick project, but I hoped to have the top finished by the fall. Fall came and I was only just finishing the paper piecing but I was happy. Until I wasn’t. It took a while to remove all the paper and as I got it out from the seams, there were little super small bits left that were too hard to get out. I never worry about those little bits and they’ve never been a problem.

I pressed each block, spraying it first with Best Press. After I did about half of them, I noticed that wherever there was the teensiest piece of paper left in the seam, if there was any ink on it, the ink transferred to the fabric and nothing I did could get that ink out. It seemed to affect the very light green fabric the most. I wouldn’t have minded a tiny dot here or there, but there were many and they looked awful, especially in the blocks on the bottom row. These were, of course, the most complicated blocks. I had to do almost all of them all over. (I only used sprayed water for the rest of the blocks.)

Time for the applique

I tried my fancy machine to use the satin stitch for the applique but it just wouldn’t work properly. So I used a narrow zigzag on the Brother. Using the small machine for this huge quilt top definitely slowed things down, but at least the machine was working, right? Some of the applique was done on individual blocks, others were done when a row of blocks was sewn together. It was an interesting way of putting a quilt top together, for sure.

I started the applique before Christmas and finished it all last week. After adding a blue border around it to ensure it was the right size, the quilt top was officially done!

Now, to quilt it. Wish me luck!