Geocities 7-1998: Mary's Quilt

This is an experiment in republishing html pages I created for my now-extinct GeoCities account, back in the day.

Mary's Wedding Gift quilt

"1,000 Pyramids"

This shows most of my sister's wedding gift quilt "1,000 Pyramids" from Diana McClun/Laura Nownes' book "Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!!". Except for the batting, this quilt was made only from material I had on hand. I managed to complete it in just 5 weeks, mailing it to Mary and Jim in plenty of time for their wedding. All machine pieced and quilted. Measures approximately 85" x 101".

The general color theme of this quilt was blue & white. "Blue" ranged from green to blue-violet, "white" was anything from white to dark tan. Various other colors snuck in too -- I'm sure there's some pink in there -- but that just adds to the charm.

Construction Techniques

The only other quilts I had made before this were constructed using Georgia Bonesteel's "Lap Quilting" technique (wherein you complete each block--piece, batt, and quilt--before you assemble them all into a quilt). The idea of trying to machine quilt anything much larger than a block still made me nervous, so I adapted (or I guess you could say "expanded") the block-by-block technique to a section-by-section approach.

Here you see the backing stretched taut over my work surface (the bi-fold doors removed from my bedroom closet). Since this was only my second quilting effort, I can only blame hubris for my selection of backing fabric! The top section of the quilt has been carefully lined up and is ready to be pin-basted in preparation for machine quilting.

The middle section has been backed and quilted. In this technique, you must stop quilting several inches from the edges. The top, bottom, and side rows are still only pin-basted.

And now we see how everything comes together. The top section is quilted, the middle section is quilted, and the top (pieced) layers of each section have been sewn together using the standard 1/4" seam allowance (top layers only!)
The next step is to smooth the batt over the quilt top (pieced) layer, trimming the excess batt. I like to lap-joint the batt pieces; others prefer to butt the edges together.
The final step is to smooth the backing fabric over it all, trim any excess, then whip- or invisible-stitch it down for the width of the quilt (being careful not to catch the top pieced layer). After the backing is stitched together, the final quilting is done in those rows that were left unquilted in the previous steps.

(Hubris again: The backing turned out perfect -- everything lined up!)

The Label

I played with my printer's fonts and sizes until I was happy with the printed results, then taped the print-out to a sunny window, taped the blank label fabric over it, and traced the message onto the fabric with a Pigma Micron brand fabric pen. The sentiments are only a slight rewording of a post made by Florence (Flovdavis) to the RCTQ newsgroup (rec.crafts.textiles.quilting).