Creative process-rainbow quilt finish

I have had a few friends ask me how long it takes to make a quilt and how I come up with ideas, so I am going to write a little bit about my process using a recent quilt (that I just gave to the recipient!) as an example.

Step 1: The first step is deciding to make one! 

Then I need to figure out these three things - pattern, fabric, recipient. That usually happens in one of these ways - I see a beautiful fabric collection and must own it; an event/situation is occurring where I feel that a quilt is an appropriate gift; or I see a quilt pattern that I am interested in making. So depending on which one of those happens first, the other steps happen, too (although I occasionally end up with recipient-less quilts which are lurking in my house waiting for recipients).

In the case of my Dark Star rainbow quilt, around November or so a friend of mine was having a tough time while the holidays were drawing near. I wanted to do something to let her know that she has a lot of friends cheering her on and wishing her the best, so I decided to make a quilt.

So in this example, I had the recipient first and then had to figure out what to make her.

She is a Grateful Dead fan, and I immediately thought tie-dye! I started googling and pinteresting tie-dye quilts, and got a few ideas. So I drew out a rough pattern and figured out that I'd need 50-ish squares of each rainbow color, so about 350 total, so I started shopping my stash, and reaching out to fellow quilters/sewists to fill in gaps (I don't have a lot of yellow or purple in my stash apparently). Then I thought about how I wanted it to look and decided to add a wonky black star in the middle. I made two of them because I had an idea about adding a layer of red to one. That didn't look right for the front, but I held onto it.

This first step is my favorite step because I get to think about friends, look at beautiful fabrics and just think about what might be possible. And to be honest, this is where I sometimes get stuck. I have so many fabric collections, and patterns I want to make, and there are always babies being born who need warm quilts to snuggle them.

Step 2: Cutting fabric

Then I figured out the actual dimensions, and started cutting fabric. That always takes a while, but I do it in front of the TV in the evening, usually. I actually love cutting fabric, especially when I'm using up scraps. For this step with non-scrappy quilts, I usually pre-wash and press, which is not as much fun.

Step 3: Piecing

Once I had my stacks of rainbow squares, and my white strips, I took them upstairs to my sewing room and started chain-piecing. I also pieced the wonky black star for the middle. Even though this quilt has so many pieces, it was still fairly straightforward and easy piecing, so it only took a couple of hours of chain-piecing and pressing, but then it was all together. This is my second favorite step, because I love to see how it all comes together. I also start a count-down for seams, so at some point, I'll know I only have 20 seams to go and I race myself to the finish line. I am not a precise piecer at all, and I am a fairly terrible presser, but for something scrappy like this, it doesn't matter that much.

Step 4: Choosing backing/Piecing backing

This sometimes happens in Step 1, but when I'm doing something scrappy, I tend to wait until I see how the top has turned out. For this quilt, I knew I wanted something neutral for the back, so I picked a really nice textured gray. Because the quilt's dimensions are about 50x50, I needed to piece the backing, so I used the other wonky star on the back, along with some of my favorite 2.5 inch strips pieced together to break up the gray. I tried to stagger them and pick complementary colors, and was really thrilled with how it turned out.

This is a step where I get stuck a lot, and I currently have a number of WIPs with no backing chosen/made. Partly because I tend to buy 1/2 yard cuts or fat quarters for my stash, so I don't have a lot of yardage that's enough for backing.

Step 5: Making the quilt sandwich

This is my least favorite part of quilting. I started pin basting this one, and pretty quickly decided to go out and get a can of spray adhesive. My husband hates spray adhesive because of the VOCs, so I only use it when he's out and I can open windows to get the smell out. Once it was done, though, it was time for Step 6.

Step 6: Deciding how to quilt

My fallback quilting is to free motion quilt a random meander. For this quilt, though I was intrigued by the idea of trying out a variegated thread, and had found a nice rainbow variegated thread at the fabric store. So I decided to straight(ish) line quilt following the rainbow spiral. That didn't seem like quite enough quilting, so I went back and did more lines in white thread in the white spiral. The colors disappear into the front, and the difference between the variegated and white shows up on the back so subtly - it ended up looking very intentional.

Step 7: Actually quilting

I know this is a favorite step of a lot of quilters, but I am usually pretty nervous about actually starting. This one went pretty quickly, though, as it was straight line. I had some puckers, but nothing too bad.

Step 7: Binding

Another not favorite and one that often makes me procrastinate. For the rainbow quilt, I picked out a black pattern, but when I started to sew it on, I quickly realized that a) I didn't like it and b) I was a couple of inches short, and had no idea where I'd bought the print to buy more. So I used a black pin dot that was in my stash, and I fortunately had just enough. And now I have binding ready to go for a smaller quilt!

Step 8: Wash and dry

This is pretty self-explanatory, and probably the easiest of all the steps!

Step 9: Bury threads

I don't bury them as I go along because I lose the flow of quilting, so that usually means an evening in front of the TV burying threads. Not a favorite, but it's easy, repetitious and fairly mindless, so not a burden either. However, this is another step where I get hung up, so I now have three recipient-less baby quilts waiting for me to do this. My husband wants them gone, so I need to get to work!

Step 10: Photograph the quilt!

I am trying to be better about getting pictures of my quilts so I can keep track of them, but sometimes waiting for the right day to take pictures can delay getting a quilt to its recipient. With the snowy winter we've had, it's been hard to take photos outside. I usually take photos with both my phone and our nice DSLR, but I am terrible at getting them uploaded from the DSLR to a place where I can access them for this blog, so readers get the iphone photos.

And finally - give to the recipient.

I think this is my favorite step. I don't always get to give them to people in person, but with this one, I did, and it was great.

Third quilt ever - made in 2011

This quilt came from a quilt magazine I bought when I was pregnant or when my son was very little. They had this argyle quilt pattern and I loved everything about it. Looking at it now, it's pretty good for a novice. I like my color choices (although I took a lot of inspiration from the magazine), I definitely didn't do points well, and the ruffling was difficult for me and turned out kind of unevenly, even with a lot of pinning. And I didn't have a free motion quilting foot yet, so I straight(ish) line quilted it.

I remade this quilt pattern a few months later with ribbon instead of ruffled strips and this was the result:  

This quilt actually won a blue ribbon in the county fair in 2012 in the baby quilt category. The judges' feedback was to work on my points and binding (which is fair enough!). I absolutely adore this quilt pattern and think it's such a great, modern-feeling quilt. It was also my first blue and orange quilt!

I have quilty bucket list plans to remake it in boy fabrics - reds, yellows and blues. I have been on the hunt for some specialty ribbon -- trains, construction equipment or rocket ships -- to make it really fun. 

Both of these are now living in my guest room. I don't want to give up the blue ribbon quilt, and the first one isn't good enough to give away. I have contemplated requilting it, because that's the main thing I am not happy with, but it is way down on my priority list.