Alrighty everyone! Here it is, the final installment of the QAYG quilt-along!
*edited to add a photo of the quilt on our bed as requested :)
I've made a modification to my original plans, so you might want to read this carefully. The directions given in the book for one of the last steps of the quilt is to hand tie the center of the blocks and at the points where the blocks come together. I decided against the tying and used a decorative stitch on my machine instead. For those of you who I've told I was going to tie my quilt, well, that was before. When we get there, whether you hand tie or use a variation of what I've done, it's going to be fabulous!
Here we go!
In part three, we ended with you making your backing.
The next step is to make your quilt sandwich by spreading your backing out (right side towards the floor) and then placing your quilted top (right side towards the ceiling) on it and pinning them together.
Once you have the quilt sandwich made, using a walking foot, stitch in the ditch (stitch in the seam line between each block) where you sewed your blocks together.
Once you've stitched around each block (hint- I did my stitch in the ditch in rows, then the columns) trim up your backing so the edges are even with the quilt top.
This is the part where I modified what I had originally intended doing. At this point, you can either hand tie with wool yarn in the center of each block and at the points where the blocks come together, or you can do something similar to what I've done. My machine has several decorative stitches, so I chose a decorative stitch and sewed it in the center of each block, and at the points where they come together.
Seriously, this pattern is uber cute either way. I decided on this method instead of hand tying mainly because my cat loves this quilt and has been laying on it wherever it is while I work on it. I was concerned he would absolutely destroy it if a bunch of yarn pieces were hanging off it (because you know, he would have thought they were exclusively for his enjoyment).
The last step after this is to bind your quilt. Instead of giving specific instructions for binding, here is the tutorial I reference when I bind a quilt. Two things I will say about it are: I use straight binding (not bias) and cut my strips 2.75 inches wide.
I chose some cake/rock/beach honeycomb for my binding because I wanted it to really stand out.
*edited to add a pic of the not so perfect or imaginative back of the quilt
Thank-you to everyone who has participated and to those who will participate in the QAYG quilt-along! It has been great fun and I'm excited to do more experimenting with this type of quilting in the future!
Have a great weekend everyone!
~Penny
