Friday, July 29, 2011

Twisted!

I managed to finish the Lil' Twister mini quilt.

Twister Front

Finished size 18.5" x 18.5".

This is actually the first quilt that I've finished in its entirety, not just the top. It was the first time quilting a quilt too, which was a bit intimidating.

Twister Back

Things I've learned from making this quilt:

  • In future I probably want to match the thread I quilt with a little more to the sashing color. I had thought that the cream thread would work better than it did in the end. I don't consider it a problem, and it doesn't look bad at all, but it's a bit of a learning curve.


  • Figuring out how to quilt a quilt is difficult and I find it intimidating. I'm new at it, so that's understandable. I can see where free motion quilting in a stippling or loopy design is popular when you're not sending a quilt out to get quilted, it takes some of the difficulty out of it. I ended up doing pretty well, I thought. I quilted some of the pinwheels in the middle of the quilt, and then quilted some of the centers of other pinwheels because I was a little too worried about there being too much space between quilted bits.


  • In future with the twister pinwheels I might end up alternating solids with prints for some more visual pop. Because of the ways you cut up the fabrics and re-sew them, and with these particular fabrics that have so many colors within each one, in some cases it can just blend away a bit too much.


  • During the process of quilting this I figured out some techniques that will help the next time I quilt things that are separately quilted areas and not continually quilted. A tutorial from Elizabeth Hartman's site helped a lot with that.


Overall I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm glad I got to reduce some stash by using the two orange solids that I had leftover from the Kitchen Window quilt, and by using cutting remnants from the pinwheels in the pieced back.

Twister Back Close-up

I stitched small fabric triangles into 2 corners on the back so that it can have a small dowel inserted to hang it.

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