I finally finished the Grub’s quilt! This one took a while because of all the scallop trim and because I decided I was going to attempt to step up my quilting skills. The scallop trim went fine. The attempt to do fancier quilting… the jury is still out on whether I accomplished that. =D
I didn’t use a pattern for this quilt so I did a lot of planning and math at the beginning, but apparently I can’t do math (please ignore my college degree that says I graduated in engineering), and my blocks didn’t quite come out the size I expected. It wasn’t a big deal as the quilt was very basic and I just worked around my faulty math, but I’m thinking I might just stick to using patterns in the future.
I also tried my hand at free motion quilting and all I can say is: wow, it’s HARD and I completely failed at it. I know practice makes perfect but I just didn’t have the time or patience to sort it out, so I put the walking foot back on and just wrestled the quilt through. It’s a little hard to see but there’s a simple quilted flower designs on all the snowball blocks.
I think the biggest thing I need to fix is how I’m making my quilt sandwhich. I am not getting the layers taut enough so I’m getting a lot of rumpling/crinkling. It gives the quilt a bit of a vintage look so it’s not like it’s a problem, but I think I prefer a smoother look. On my previous quilts, I used fusible batting but for this one, I tried a spray glue which works fine but I’m going to have to work on anchoring my layers better.
The scallop trim took the longest to do but I really like how it looks so I will definitely be doing it again. I used the Quick Points 1″ scallop rulers which I purchased from Fat Quarter Shop. I figured the scallops are kind of like the taggies on blankets that babies like to play with, and the Larva seemed to approve as she was pulling on the trim when I showed her the finished quilt.
For the scallop trim, you assemble long strips of fabric, trace the scallop design on, sew the scallops, trim the excess fabric, and flip the scallops inside out and press. It’s a time consuming process but once I got going, it went very smoothly and I found it to be a very zen-like activity. I also watched The Mummy and The Mummy Returns a few times while doing this. =D
And the finished quilt:
