Across the Finish Line

 

 

After possibly 20 years, this quilt is finally finished.  I really don't remember when I started it, but the copyright printed in the selvage of the fabric was 2002.  I know I started it when we lived in the house before this one, which we moved into in the fall of 2008.  It's been a long journey, but I finally got it across the finish line (Ha! Ha!).  The name was my husband's suggestion, and I thought it was a good one.  I gave the completed quilt to my son last night.  He said that he's really not into NASCAR, but that he didn't mind having another blanket.  Maybe at some point I'll make him a quilt that represents something he actually likes.  And maybe it won't take 20 year to make.

Anyway, the quilting was mostly about practice and trying out motifs.  The outer border is a large meander.  The inner border and sashing is done with cursive Ls.  Reading left to right and top to bottom, the block motifs are still water, circles/cobblestones, swirls, leaves, stars and loops, and flames.  The cobblestones show up too much, mostly because the thread was too light a color for that much quilting on that fabric.

Since this was the first actual quilt that I quilted on a long-arm machine, it was a learning experience.  I was just using thread that came with the machine and learning to quilt in a new way.  If I were doing it over, I'd use a medium gray thread instead of the white and gray variegated threaded that it's mostly quilted in.  I ran out of thread before it was finished and I bought some light gray thread that matched what I was already using the best that I could.  

Also, if I were buying the fabric for this quilt today, I probably wouldn't have bought black and white checkerboard fabric for the binding.  I think I would have done it in red.  I decided to cut the binding on the bias, because I thought it would look better.  I think that was a good idea.  I did the binding completely by machine, but I sewed the label on by hand.  The label also has the bias checkerboard around the outside.  I really wouldn't want to bind a whole quilt by hand with that fabric.  Mostly because in many places you are sewing black to black, which is very difficult to see.

A new toy

 

This is me with my new Moxie long-arm quilter.  I've actually had it for a couple weeks now, but this was taken the day they came and set it up (Fri., June 28).  I've quilted a few practice things so far that I'll picture below.  It's a learning curve and I definitely don't expect to be a master at it right away.  I've also had some issues that seem to be a problem with the machine itself, but I suppose it could be user error.  My thread keeps breaking and the thread keeps getting tangled in the bobbin area.  It also runs a bit rough at times.  Someone from the shop is coming out on Monday to check it out.  

This is the practice panel that came with the machine.  The little colorful pieces on the side are for testing my tension.  They had some quilting suggestions - the e and l shapes, the meanders with hearts and stars, and curved lines.  The rest were things I tried based on YouTube tutorials I've watched.

This is a fat quarter that I decided to quilt for practice.  It's hard to tell much about the quilting from the picture, but there is a continuous feather motif around the outside and flowers and loops on the inside.

I guess I no longer have any excuse for not finishing my UFOs.
 

NASCAR quilt top

 

This quilt top is one of my UFOs that I wanted to finish this year.  As it turns out, it wasn't actually a completed quilt top.  The borders still needed to be cut and added.  

It had been so long since I last worked on this quilt, that I had forgotten exactly what the plan had been.  There was far more of the Jeff Gordon fabric than the Dale Earnhardt fabric, and I needed to use the fabric for both the borders and the backing.  Since the panels alternated between the two, I decided to have both represented in the borders and the backing.  I didn't take a picture of it, but the backing is pieced with large cuts of the two different fabric - 18 x width of fabric for the Gordon fabric and 18 x 20-ish for the Earnhardt fabric.  For some reason that I totally don't remember, I had cut off about 3 inches all along one selvage edge of the Earnhardt fabric.

Having the side borders cut wider than the top and bottom was intentional, because the quilt seemed a little oddly narrow.  I decided to cut the border based on the grid-work in the fabric, so the sides are twice as wide as the top and bottom.  It might would have looked a little better if I had made them a little closer together in size, but it's fine.  It's not like it's going to be displayed on a wall or anything.  Anyway, the quilt top ended up measuring 54 x 64.