The Zig Zag Quilt

Have you ever just been so glad to be done with a quilt that you aren't even sure if you are happy with it?! I'm on the fence with this one and I'm thinking it's because of all the hurdles. I'll start showing all the pictures of the quilting on this as I tell the story behind this quilt (because I did different FMQ on each fabric!).

This quilt is for my mother and we started planning for it in January when I went to visit her. She chose The Zig Zag Quilt pattern from the book Quilting Happiness. I was thrilled because it's one of my favorites in the book. We went to her LQS and she chose these fabrics for her guest room. At first she wanted queen size. A friend was helping me do the math for that when she then decided the size in the book was okay! I had already cut my white fabric so I went out and got more.

The piecing on this one gave me a bit of trouble. First off, it uses templates. I really hate using templates! And especially for the number of pieces this quilt required. So I used my triangle ruler and my Sidekick ruler and laid them on the templates to get my measurements for the cutting. Maybe that was my problem? But I also had issues with the measurements and quantities that were listed in the book being incorrect. I had to go back and cut more.

So I would definitely categorize this quilt as intermediate/advanced because of those issues. But I believe the designer had said the same thing!

Then I made a rookie mistake and just threw a backing on the quilt without thinking about it. You can TOTALLY see all my quilting on the back and it just rubs me the wrong way.

I even considered putting a second backing on this to cover it up and then stitch in the ditch for the continuous zig zags. Ultimately I decided to let it go! Cue the music for all of you with Frozen loving children.

I'm sure I'll grow to re-love this quilt once I've had some space for it. But at the moment, I'm happy to say goodbye to it and send it off to Florida!

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: The Zig Zag Quilt

Pattern: from Quilting Happiness

Fabrics: various batiks, kona, white sketchy print and a Basic Gray black/grey

Finished size: 42" x 54"

Finished: 6/1/14

Rail Fence for Charity

Have you seen Crazy Mom Quilts Charity QAL? She is doing her QAL for charity and all quilts are welcome, not just the Rail Fence pattern. They are being sent to Margaret's Hope Chest. 

The Rail Fence is the tutorial she gave so I followed along and made this 'boy' quilt. It was a great use of scraps and yardage and came together so quickly!

Here's a close up so you can see some of the fabrics I used. My 5 yr old was particularly smitten with those robots!

I bound this completely by machine using this technique and I loved it. It was quick and easy and I feel like my quilt is more stable which I prefer when I don't know who will be caring for it.  You can see both the front and backs of my binding in the above photo and see how clean it looks.

I totally forgot to piece my label on the back! I don't often forget that step, but I guess because I had all these great big pieces, I was excited about how easy it was going to be and it never occurred to me. I will probably hand sew a label before I mail it.

I did a simple wavy line quilting across the whole thing. My daughter helped me with this stage. I put the pedal up on the table for her to push and she was thrilled!

I was a bit nervous about how this would come together, but I'm thrilled with the results. Hopefully this quilt will make some little boy (or girl!) happy!!

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: none

Pattern: Rail Fence

Fabrics: Scrappy from stash

Finished size: 54" x66"

Finished: 6/8/14