Third Time's the Charm Right? :)

My third quilty adventure was planned before I finished the second. . . I just know some of you know exactly what I am talking about :) I made the quilt pictured below with Hoffman Bali Pops Kool Aid strips.  The border and binding was from yardage purchased at a local LQS.  I gave this quilt to my daughter. 

Here is a close up of my first attempt at writing in free motion, not so bad!

Oh the lessons I learned on this one! I had no idea what a bias edge was. . . sometimes ignorance really is bliss, sometimes not so much.  I did a lot of stretching/easing/ripping to get those seams to match but they mostly did!  And Jenny made it look so easy!!  You might recall that I said this quilt was also inspired by a Jenny Doan video.  It was the Amazing Jelly Roll Quilt Pattern by 3 Dudes and can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ixvjje310.

I decided I was going to make the squares bigger, a lot bigger.  This presented a challenge, being a new quilter and having not amassed many toys (I have rectified that problem haha) I had to figure out how I was going to get those big squares (20 x 20) square! And then once they were square, figure out how to get a straight continuous cut across the diagonal both ways!! I used the lines on my cutting mat and made a partial cut across the diagonal, moved the ruler up and finished the cut and then turned the block and repeated the process.  It worked, it got me past that part of the process anyway.

Moving on to sewing them together.  I was not a believer in pinning and was not going to start with this quilt.... So I think for the most part, I got REALLY lucky!  No really, I have no idea how this quilt came together as well as it did!  There is a forum on Missouri Star Quilt Co's web site.  I can't tell you how many people posted on that forum the troubles they had getting seams to match up.  Several had put the blocks away with no intention of going back to them any time soon.  As I said previously, I did a lot of easing.  I learned that sewing the 'baggy on the bottom" (when the ends of the material are put together, if there is a piece that is longer - that is the piece that goes against the feed dogs) was the key to getting the material to ease together. 

OK, sewn together but now I had a couple of spots where all those seams came together that had stretched pretty noticeably.... I knew there was no way I was going to be able to quilt those areas out of the quilt.  So off to my LQS I went with quilt top in hand.  I asked one of the women who teaches quilting classes if there was anything I could do to get that top to lay flat.  She gave me two suggestions: 1) lay the top on a bed or on the floor under a ceiling fan, spritz (don't soak) it with water and let it air dry.  Don't pat it don't touch it, just let it dry under the fan.  2) Use the highest loft batting you can find!  I did this, step 1 I repeated because it seemed it really did help, and it worked!  was able to quilt it and had no issues with puckers or creases in the quilting.  Happy dance!!
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Please feel free to comment or ask questions.  I'd love to know that someone is actually reading this!

In my next post, I'll share how an unnoticed mistake turned into an entirely different design!

Until next time, keep on quilting!!