9-patch quilt

I finally finished this monster.  And by calling it 'monster,' I mean that it has been lurking in the sewing room for months, waiting to attack me.  But I guess I've finally won.  (Ha!  Take that, quilt!)



( The Back )

I have to admit that this is pretty much the crappiest job of machine quilting I've ever done.  The back is covered in sewn-down wrinkles and ripples, the edges are really warbly, and the tension of the quilting stitches is wonky.  (It's really not narrower on one end, though, that's just my camera angle.)

I had tension issues all the way through the quilting process.  I usually find it difficult to balance the tension while free-motion stitching, but this project was even more so.  If the tension was balanced for piecing, then during the quilting the bobbin thread floated on the bottom while the spool thread made bumps.  If I tightened the top tension, the thread repeatedly broke.  I tried different threads, different needles, stitching in different directions, but nothing really improved it so I just dealt with bumps and broken threads and finally, somehow, it got done.

But for all that, I still like the quilt a lot.  It's pretty, it has rich, bright colors, and it's functional.  It's about 40" x 54", a generous crib size.

I used wool batting for this (this probably contributed to my tension issues).  All the batting was leftover strips from other projects, so between this and the star quilt, I have reduced my batting remnants from one giant cardboard box to one little bag.  It's very lightweight and lofty.  I will probably machine wash and dry it; the batting says not to but I have successfully done so with my other wool-batting quilt.

It feels so good to finally have this done and out of the sewing room!