Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Fresh Squeezed Disappearing Nine Patch: Finished!!!

Look at what is finally finished! I first blogged about this quilt here. That was on May 28th. It only took me three months to finish. I decided that I could not let a summery quilt not be finished before summer ended so this past Labor Day I leaped to the challenge.


I love how pieced backs look so I decided to try it on a larger scale than I have ever before with this backing. It was actually quite fun. I had two disappearing nine patch blocks left over from the front that I didn't want to go to waste. I also had a friendship star block that matched and a friendship star block that somehow went wrong and became a bearclaw instead. I guess it was tired of just being a star. I then just found more fabrics that matched the overall color scheme and threw it together. It really is my first improvisational attempt. There are a few puckers on the back, but I still love it.
This is also my first attempt at machine quilting and I really had fun with it. These pictures are also a much better representation of the actual orange border color than the first one.

I almost broke my machine-or at least I thought I did. My husband took it in today to get serviced while I was at work, and it is awesome now! It would start this knocking sound and then the needle would stop as if it was jammed; I would have to manually push the shuttle? knob past the point where it was stuck and then hit the gas to get it going again. Now I can sew slowly. That is pretty cool too. I cheat on my binding and sew it all on at one time. On the next quilt, I think I will try the "real" way and handsew part of it. I am not very good at that kind of hand sewing-so we shall see if that really happens. I love it! It is the first quilt I have made that I am keeping for me.

9 comments:

John said...

Audrey, it's beautiful! I have some charm squares from this line, and you just may have inspired me to pull them back out and make something from it. I haven't tried free motion quilting yet -- I'm too nervous! And I've forced myself to only do the traditional hand sewing on bindings so far -- I want to get good at the "right" way before trying to do a machine binding. It's not so bad once you get the swing of it! Of course, I haven't tried a full-sized quilt yet ...

QuiltedSimple said...

Audrey - this is absolutely gorgeous!!!! I love it. And I love the pieced back - this is the perfect summer quilt. I learned how to do binding both ways, but I HATE hand sewing anything, so I figured out about 3 or 4 quilts ago how to machine sew the binding, and I haven't looked back yet. The quilt I just took to the fair I did the binding by machine - it came out really well. Great job!
Kris

Amanda Jean said...

wow!!! I LOVE your quilt! great job on it. I still haven't tried the disappearing 9 patch but this makes me want to try it today!

em's scrapbag said...

I love this wonderfully fun quilt. Way to go.

Rebecca said...

gorgeous. wow. i just learned about this pattern and googled it and your post came up, so i'm really excited to come across your work. i love the colors you used, especially the orange. the whole effect is so bright, cheery, and summery. and your quilting looks perfect. what a great first experience with machine quilting.

Anonymous said...

The front is gorgeous, of course, but I love your pieced back, too! Funny how saying that it's "only" the back frees us to make improvisational art.

Colleen formerly of South Africa said...

What a successful first quilt. Lovely.

Amy said...

Audrey,

I love this quilt. I was intigued by the pattern when I saw it on Sew mama sew earlier this year. You have really done it justice with your choice of colours.

Sarah said...

i love this quilt! so summery!