The peacock hanging quilt is progressing. In fact, I have the top finished. However, I need to go out and buy some fabric for the backing and some batting to go in between.
Figure 1. Finished top
This project is super easy compared to some of the other hanging quilts I’ve done, even if it is huge. Mostly it was just cutting fabric with very little sewing required.
I needed to cut the excess fabric on the peacock panel while trying to make it as rectangular as possible. Then I had to cut strips from the lilac coloured fabric and from the flower print fabric and sew them to the quilt.
The panel itself was a bit smaller than the instructions said it would be, so I ended up cutting the lilac fabric wider and then, once I had sewn those strips to the panel, I cut off the excess lilac to get the size suggested by the booklet. I should have cut the top and bottom strips more, but decided in the end that I preferred having the same width on all the lilac strips, possibly because it’s my favourite colour and I can never get enough lilac. That means that my panel will end up a bit longer than what it should have been, but I prefer it like this.
I encountered some issues with sewing the strips of the flower fabric. I had to cut three strips of 3 and a half inch wide fabric, and I just could not manage sewing the first two strips together without making an error. In frustration, I went off to YouTube to see what I was doing wrong. It turned out to be a silly error. I was trying to match the two ends of the fabric together, but in reality, you’re supposed to leave a bit of fabric extra protruding on both sides, which makes it so much easier to figure out whether the two strips are meeting at a right angle and where to sew.
Figure 2. Sewing at a 45 degree angle; you can see how the fabric meets here.
Unfortunately, my first attempt, while well done, was, well, not well done.
Figure 3. Pretty sure that’s not how that’s supposed to be.
I did eventually get the strips attached together correctly. However, I realized, after I had practically finished sewing the flower strips to the quilt, that I should have paid attention to the pattern’s orientation. It’s a good thing the pattern is busy so it doesn’t show too much that the flowers are pointing in one direction on one side and in the other direction on the other side.
Figure 4. Success! Oh, wait, maybe not a complete success there.
That was a silly error on my part.
I also didn’t pay attention to the orientation of the flowers when I sewed the strips to the quilt, so sometimes the flowers are pointing towards the panel and sometimes they are pointing away from the panel.
This is why I am not ready for a quilt show: attention to detail.
But the progress from a new quilter (or anything, really) to an expert is strewn with the errors that teach us important lessons which, we hope, we will remember the next time we make a quilt.
Anyway, I’m going to have to put this quilt to the side until I have time to go to a fabric store to get batting and fabric.
I also don’t know what pattern I want to use when I am going to quilt this thing. Or what colour thread I should use. Decisions, decisions!
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