The Never Ending Quilt

I am so happy that I finally get to write this post! I started making a quilt for Lincoln in early June and I have finally finished it! Making this quilt was really, really difficult. I have been actively working on it for the grand majority of the last five months, but there were so many steps to complete and so many things to think about that it just took a really long time to finish. It is far from perfect, but I am pleased with it.

Ways I made this quilt harder then it needed to be:

1) I decided to do a pattern based on half-square triangles (what was I thinking? Oh, I know, “I don’t know what I’m getting myself into.”)

2) I made those half-square triangles relatively small (another, “I don’t know what I’m doing” moment.)

3) I didn’t buy enough of the backing fabric. When I went back to buy more Hancock’s fabric was out of that (solid, very basic, should be pretty standard) color. I had to drive to Jo-Ann’s to get it and the color doesn’t match exactly. It’s very annoying.

4) I decided to do one zig-zag on the back and that made me feel like I needed to line it up with the zig-zags on the front because I originally planned to quilt it in zig-zags…

5) I decided to free-motion quilt it when the zig-zags didn’t line up correctly. I had to pick out all the zig-zag quilting I had already done before I could start free-motion quilting it.

6) Free-motion quilting a twin sized quilt is a huge undertaking for an absolute beginner. It took hours and hours and hours. And it killed my arms. We didn’t eat on the dining room table for weeks and I listened to three audio books.

7) I cut the binding fabric short ways, so I had to sew a bunch of extra seems.

If I ever make another quilt (and I suspect I will, even though I’m feeling a little burned out right now) hopefully I’ll have a lot fewer “I don’t know what I’m doing” moments.

Lincoln loves his new quilt, so that’s what makes me really happy!