I’m finished! Woohoo!
The quilt-sandwich making took over an hour {followed these instructions} which I did while the little guy was napping. I’m glad I splurged on the bent-quilting pins – made pinning the layers easy. Quick work.
Then on to the quilting.
Oh, my.
I haven‘t had much success with free motion quilting. But I was one determined girl. So I checked out a few tutorials. The best advice I read, however, was a comment in a flickr thread telling me “machine goes fast, hands go slow.” Reading that was like the key that unlocked the door. That and increasing the tension to a 6 or 7 (from a 3-4).
It is physically taxing to move that much fabric around, balancing the weight of it all and trying to keep it moving under the quick up/down/up/down of the needle. Took a lot of breaks. Untangled the kid from under the table. All in all the quilting piece took a good 3-4 hours.
Binding went relatively quickly. I like using small, geometric print on the bindings. Adds interest I think (not that this quilt really needed it). I used the machine with a walking foot to attach the binding to the back of the quilt, then hand tacked it to the front. By this time, I was sick of sitting in front of my sewing machine. So I did the final hand sewing on the couch watching the rest of Dinner with Schmucks.
Finished size is approx 50″ x 54″. Nice lap sized. Pattern can be found here. Along with a wealth of quilt-making instruction.
Lessons Learned:
- bent-quilting pins are my friends
- do the on-the-floor work during naptime
- machine fast! hands slow!
- tension = high (6-8) for free motion quilting

I tried to leave this once before – so you might get this twice.
I’m glad to see this! I really like the pattern & the colors.
With a helper no wonder your machine goes fast.
I am so impressed! It lookos awesome! I’m glad you were able to find some good tips.
Oooo I LOVE it! So so pretty! I dream of making something like this one day…. however I barely even know how to thread a needle!
It looks gorgeous!! Wish I had patience and talent to make one!! 🙂
Awesome quilt! How talented you are!
beautiful work, you!