Rob helped me take a picture of our quilt so you'd be able to see the whole thing. It's bigger than you expect when you're trying to hold it up (though I am a bit short). I'm so very please with how this turned out. It is the largest quilt I've made to date (and probably the largest quilt I could reasonably stuff through my sewing machine) and used more traditional skills than I've employed in the past. This quilt has pieced squares, proper borders and beautiful mitred corners (I love those corners every time I see them).

The quilt over all is 120 cm x 146 cm (47 1/4" x 57 1/2"). The centre panels is made up of twelve 25.5 cm x 25.5 cm (10" x10") squares. The borders are 10 cm (4"), 4 cm (1 1/2") and 7.5 cm (3"). The binding is slightly less than 1 cm (1/4").*

Making up the squares for the centre of the quilt was really fun. I used a technique called confetti piecing that I learned from a book I won at a guild meeting a few years ago (Crazy Quilts by Machine by J. Marsha Michler); it's wonderful for using up odd scraps of fabric. You basically just sew pieces of fabric together at odd angles and then cut them up and sew them to different pieces of fabric at different angles. Making the squares felt a bit like making cookies: once my pieces of fabric were starting to look the way I wanted I pieced them together until I had sections large enough to cut my squares out of; then I pieced all the scraps together again and cut out more squares. Eventually I had only narrow pieces left so I pieced them end to end and made my border. So fun.

We didn't bother to take a picture of the back but the fabric is the same as the background on the front except for a strip across the top and along one side where I had to add some other Christmas fabrics to make it big enough. I also added a label in one corner so that when I am old and senile (or if the quilt is ever given away or handed down) we'll know when I made it.

Most of the quilting is just stitch-in-the-ditch but I used a pretty, variegated thread that sort of plays with the wild piecing. I added some lines down the middles of the squares and around the outside (halfway through the first border - you can see it better in yesterday's post) to add interest and to make sure the batting stays put.

* I do all my quilting (in fact all my sewing unless the pattern says otherwise) in inches but being Canadian like to give both metric and imperial measurements when I can. Also 57" means very little to me when I try to visualize it but I can do 1.5 m just fine.

I finished something this weekend. Rob gave me a fabulous gift and kept Abby with him for all of Saturday morning. I felt so liberated I almost didn't know what to do with my time. I did some useful stuff like the dishes and some tidying around the house and then I sat down and finished the binding on this quilt (you've seen it before here, here and here). I'll try to get a picture of the whole thing sometime soon but couldn't wait to post it. It's done just in time for our Christmas decorating and will spend December on our couch in the livingroom, perfect for snuggling under to watch a movie. I think White Christmas would be appropriate (I love the dresses in that movie).

This is next to my chair right now.
So cute!