One of my goals for this year was to finish up my quilts. I have a lot of quilt tops pieced but they haven’t become finished quilts. Part of this is because I’ve always pieced by machine but quilted my tops by hand, so the first part of the process is much faster than the second. Either I needed to hire someone to quilt my tops, or I needed to learn to machine quilt them myself. I went for option B and ordered a walking foot for my machine.

This (ironically) meant that I needed to make more quilt tops in order to practice machine quilting before taking on my existing quilt tops. Also, I thought it would be easier to work with a smaller quilt first, and my existing tops are mostly big. So, I began to piece lap quilts from scraps.

This one was inspired by this YouTube video from Missouri Star, Make a Summer Squares Quilt. They suggest using a jelly roll with two contrasting solid fabrics, but I dove into my scrap bag instead. I have a lot of strips in there, many of them from my Escher quilt, and it drives me crazy to waste fabric. I grouped strips into lights and darks to piece them together, using a Kaffe Fassett stripe in greens cut crosswise and KF yarn-dyed solid mauve as my contrast squares in the middle. Here it is:

I used all the pieces leftover from the Escher quilt but was missing two strips to make enough blocks for this layout. I used some lime Roman Glass in my stash then added one non-KF fabric – it’s the lime with polka dots that’s in the border. Because fabric was so tight, I didn’t really manage the light and dark assignment of colours in the Missouri Star quilt, but I like how bright and cheerful mine is.

The walking foot was delivered while I was piecing this, so I got right down to quilting by machine for the first time. (eek) I added one more tool to my arsenal – Odif 505 temporary fabric adhesive. (That’s an Amazon link.) You spray it on the batting then iron the fabric to it, then flip it over and do the same with the backing. It keeps the layers from sliding around as you stitch and is pretty awesome. (It washes out.)

I watched this video and thought this diagonal quilting was something I could do. The trick was that I’m using my vintage Singer 185 for this project, which is a workhorse but a straight stitch machine. (My Elna has an appointment for a sewing-machine-spa-day next month!) In the video, she uses a wave stitch chosen from the machine’s options. I decided to make my own waves, even though they’d be less regular.

I used Guterman 100% cotton thread in black, a Schmetz 14 sharp “chrome” needle, and my new walking foot. I set the guide on the foot for an inch but didn’t follow it faithfully. I wanted a more organic look to the “waves” and I like how they worked out. There are a few tucks but I expected that since my borders were a bit wavy (which comes from sewing fabric cut on the crossgrain onto strips with a bias edge. Next time, I’ll be more careful!)

It was a bit of a wrestle moving the fabric, but I got used to it. And my waves improved over the course of quilting. I noticed that the 185 likes to stop with its needle up, so I learned to crank it down before doing anything else (to avoid any little jumps). My curves were also smoother when I didn’t stop in the width of the quilt. Faster and smoother is better, too. Lessons learned. 🙂

There are a lot of things you can buy to make this machine quilting easier, but I’m trying to keep a lid on expenses until I decide whether I like it or not. Instead of buying quilting gloves, for example, I used a new pair of garden gloves. I did find it a bit tough to move the quilt, even with the walking foot, so I ordered a LaPierre Studio Supreme Slider (that’s another Amazon link.) This is a reuseable plastic sheet that you lay over the machine bed to make it smoother and more slippery.

The cool thing about this quilt is that it came completely from the stash and my scrap bag, even the batting. I’d bought a big roll of 100% cotton batting to layer up all my quilt tops and this is 1/3 of the last piece. (The very last piece is destined for Scrappy Test Lap Quilt #2 which is a bit bigger than this one.) The backing is a piece of yarn-dyed cotton that I got at the thrift store, leftover from the Purl Soho apron I made for the mister.

You can see some pins there – I’ll sew the bias binding down by hand on the back side. The finished quilt is about 30 by 42″.

The one thing I’d change was the colour of the thread for the quilting. I used black, because I didn’t know what to pick, but I don’t love the look of the black on the solid mauve border. So, in future, I’ll hold the quilting thread against the most solid fabric to choose a colour.

On to the next one! I’ll have some knitting to show you soon, too – a cowl, a new pair of socks and a cardigan.