Finished quilt: Fake cathedral windows

Quilt details

Name, Recipient, Size, Start/Finished date, Pattern and Fabrics used

• The Fake cathedral windows quilt.
• I made it for myself.
• 102 x 103 cm (length x height).
• 2.2.2018 (the Jeans workshop course) - 29.4.2018.
• I free motion quilted my maternal grandmother's crocheted doilies to the blue background fabric, then used the "fake cathedral windows"-method to quilt the denim circles to them.
• The blue background fabric was a second hand store find I found the same Saturday the Jeans workshop ended, the crocheted doilies are ones that I inherited from my maternal grandmother, and the denim were both scraps from way back when and also scraps provided at the course.

Batting, backing and binding fabric:

• The fake cathedral window method is a quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method, and the denim works as the backing and part of the quilting. I opted not to use any batting, because it would have made the already bulky quit even more difficult to handle.
• Binding was made out of 10 cm wide denim pieces of various lengths, sewn together.

Quilting pattern:

• I started out using a pre-programmed sewing pattern on the sewing machine at Arbis, but in the end I just switched to using regular straight stitch with a stitch length of 3 mm. Together with a basic straight stitch presser foot, not my free motion quilting foot (which by the way was broken by this whole endeavor along with about 5 denim needles 90/16), it was the only reason I got the whole quilt finished at all.

Top thread:

• For piecing the QAYG-denim circles: Coats, 100% polyester, 200m, color 9068 (dark blue).
• For free motion quilting the doilies to the background fabric: Gutermann Mara 120, 100% polyester, 1000m, color 1 (cream white).
• All in all, it took about 1 and 1/2 spool of the blue Coats thread to make the quilt.

Bobbin thread:

• For piecing, Gutermann Mara 120, 100% polyester, 1000m, color 800 (white). 
• For free motion quilting the doilies to the background fabric: the dark blue Coats thread.
• For quilting the denim circles into the cathedral window pattern, the same as above, and I used a bit more than 4 filled bobbins.

Here are some photos I took of my work in progress on this type of quilt. Since it was the first time I tried it out,  

First, it took me three different doilies (two circular ones and one rectangular one) to create the background pieces. I spray basted them to the denim circles (look on the left side of the photo).

I was glad to be able to use the large cutting table at Arbis for planning the layout of the pieces.

Once I was happy with the center layout, it took me a while to come up with how I wanted the "border" to be placed.

For the border, I cut the doily into the square pieces it had been made of, and then free-motion-quilted them to the already cut background squares. It was easier that way, unlike with the large circular doilies. With them, it was easier to free-motion quilt them whole. 

Here's the final layout. The "squares" make up the outer border.

Since the time at the course was running out that Saturday, I neatly stacked the denim circles into numbered piles (1 to 7), so I would know which rows had which circles to be sewn together.

This was taken later, also at Arbis but at the quilting evening course I take on Thursdays. I started sewing together rows.

Progress was a bit slow at first, because having come this far, it was honestly really boring sewing. I had to be sure to match up the corners really well, so they wouldn't leave any holes between the circles as they were turned into the QAYG-squares. I had to *sigh* redo more than a couple actually.

But finally, all the rows were sewn together. All I had to do was iron down the "flaps" and quilt them down.

And just then... I ran out of thread.

What a letdown.

And then, the project stood at a standstill for a while.... But at least, I had ironed down those annoying flaps!

And when I got around to buy more thread, on another weekend course at Arbis, I sewed the flaps down using straight stitching. I tried free motion quilting them down first, but that broke my free-motion-quilting foot! Trust me, that is NOT something I'm gonna forget for a while!

So, straight stitching it was.

And that was how I managed to make this quilt. One thing I needed to do however, was put binding on it, because I thought the edge didn't look even and straight enough. So, using a 10 cm binding I sewed together from 10 cm scraps, it became this:

I even took the quilt to the spring exhibition at Arbis. It's lying there in the middle on the choir steps, and not hanging, so your eye wanders in the photo until you see it ;)

Happy quilting everybody! Don't do like me, and break your fmq-presser foot on denim :)

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