A Cozy Quilt

This quilt really was a labor of love.  I cannot remember exactly when I started piecing (probably around 2013), but I am very proud to say that this is the first quilt that I have managed to finish! Well, except for that square that I noticed the other day that I somehow missed - whoops, will have to go back and fix that when I get a minute.

And each and every stitch was done by hand, which is exactly the way I wanted it.

I actually say down at the machine after cutting my binding to stitch the lengths together, only to laugh at myself when I realized what I was about to do.  After hundreds of hours, I almost machine stitched a few inches of bias binding!  Normally when I create bias binding, it's for a garment project that is being machine stitched.  Well, I caught myself before machine stitching this final bit of my quilt.

After all of the hand quilting, it was a bit terrifying trimming everything down, but it went as smoothly as could be expected.

And while I am still thousands of hours away from being a hand quilting expert, I certainly know how to hand stitch layers of fabric together. 

Not only that, it is probably my favorite thing to do!

According to the experts, a double layer of bias binding works nicely for binding a quilt, so that is what I did.

This step was actually a bit of a relief after having some moments of frustration with the hand quilting.  But this is only my first quilting experience, and I hope to improve the size and consistency of my stitches on my next quilt!

The final step of the project was the quilt label.  I have seen all sorts of options, but since this entire quilt was hand stitched, it seemed like the proper thing to do was to hand stitch the label.

After deciding what information I wanted to include, I typed up different versions in a few different fonts.

The information was transferred to my fabric with a heat erasable pen by holding it against a window in the daylight.  It's an antiquated way to transfer markings, but it works!

I pulled out my stash of embroidery floss and decided on a color that I liked, and got back to my sewing roots with a bit of hand embroidery.

The finished label was ironed (which makes the ink markings disappear), and it was stitched to a corner of the quilt.

And that means that my very first hand quilting saga has come to an end.  The quilt is completely finished!

This has been a rather humbling experience, but I do have to say that I am hooked.

I am a bit obsessed with quilts these days, and I can't wait to start piecing another.

My hexi quilt has been getting a bit of attention lately.  It may only be for a short amount of time each day, but it feels good to be making progress across the expanse of the quilt.  And for the time being, I have this lovely patchwork quilt to snuggle beneath.  I am going to give myself a flexible deadline to finish the hexi quilt by the end of the year, but we will see how that goes!