Monday, May 28, 2012

Vintage Summer Cheater project

I am actually working on two quilts right now.  The first one is a project I have had in mind for a long time, after seeing (somewhere on the interwebs, how I wish I had the photo still!) a beautiful zigzag quilt in a whole color line of dots and white.  I've been keeping my eyes peeled for the right collection of dot fabric, and finally knew I had it when I saw this a few months ago.  I bought a yard of each and am making a big zigzag quilt.

But then, a few weeks ago, I saw the new Little Yellow Bicycle line called Vintage Summer.  (I currently have the cheater as my blog background, but that will probably change at some point.)  I absolutely fell in love with the line.  I mean, the fabric sang to me, you know?  I was obsessed.  At that moment I really couldn't afford it, but I had to have it.  Especially the cheater print.  (If you don't know, a cheater print is a fabric that is printed to look like a patchwork quilt already.)  I don't normally care for cheater prints, but this one was so summery and nostalgic, and was exactly like what I would make out of the line of fabrics.  It was perfect.  I'm not the only one who thought so--it sold out in all the outlets I could find after a day, when I realized I hadn't ordered enough.  (I was able to order more the next week though.)

I hate that they are called "cheaters."  Usually, piecing a quilt top is not the bulk of the work of making a quilt, at least to me.  Of course, I tend to like, and make, pretty simple quilts.  But it's kind of a demeaning term, isn't it?  Makes me feel like my quilt is cheating somehow.  It's not.  I'm keeping the top simple--just sashed it on all sides with one of the red on white prints from the line, used some of the leftover blocks and some of the other prints for the backing.  But you could do a lot of different things with it--cut it into nine-blocks and sash them all, for floating blocks, or cut a whirlygig template and repiece it into smaller whirlygigs, for example.  (Ha! I sound like an actual quilter, I so am not one.)  To me, most of the work is in the quilting.  I'm halfway through mine now.

Everyone must have a favorite part of making a quilt--planning it, or piecing the top, or doing the quilting.  Mine is binding.  Why? I don't know.  I love binding quilts.  I really love the hand-sewing at the very end.  I machine-sew the binding onto the back of the quilt and then do the finishing on the top, and I love sitting with a quilt in my lap for an hour, watching a movie and hand-sewing my binding.  And then throwing it in the washer and dryer and watching it magically become a scrunchy, real quilt.

Anyway, this project put the other one on the back burner.  I'll be able to show it to you soon.

What's your favorite part of making a quilt?


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