Thursday, November 26, 2015

TGIFF! Zig Zag Quilt

Welcome to Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday. If you're here in the USA you might be recovering from a Thanksgiving food coma, or battling the shoppers for 'Black Friday.' Maybe you even braved the masses who shop Thanksgiving Day. In the spirit of this crazy season, I'm making this post available on Thursday. I cannot wait until Friday! Let's get this TGIFT/TGIFF party started. I'd love to see what you are finishing up! 

My Zig Zag Quilt had its beginning in March of 2014. I fell in love with some beautiful batik stripe fabrics at the Original Quilting and Sewing Expo in Lakeland, FL. I'm happy to say I completed the quilt in less than two years! 

Binding took quite a bit of time, and inspired the name.
My original design did not call for a crazy binding. No, I drew it out on my graph paper all neat and square. The craziest I got with the first sketch was cutting off the corners a little bit. When I started putting the whole thing together though, I just couldn't justify trimming so much of the set in triangles that put this design on edge point. The crazy zig-zag binding was going to put me on edge! Fortunately, with a helpful search engine and YouTube, I was able to find some great tips on how to handle an irregular binding. I'll include a link to the video that I followed at the end of this post.


It seems that everyone has different parts of the quilt making process that are super appealing to them. I run the gambit, I love piecing (even though I'm not entirely precise), I love quilting (especially now that I have Louise the Longarm), but there is something so satisfying about hand stitching the binding onto a quilt. Perhaps its the feeling of accomplishment knowing that you are putting the finishing touches on something that you've worked so long on, or maybe I just find the hand work to be very relaxing. I'm not sure. Anyway, as soon as the binding was on, I couldn't wait to take the quilt out to the groves to get some pictures. 


Free hand 'straight line' quilting enhances the strong geometric and graphic quality of this quilt. I used Louise's hopping foot to follow along the stripes in the red fabric and then use straight diagonal lines in all of the white areas. You might be able to see from the photo of the back that there is a difference in color where the red stripe fabric is and where the white areas are. That's because I used a variegated King Tut thread from Superior threads for the red areas and white Aurifil (#2024) in the white areas.


 A little close up of the quilting. I know it's an amateur shot, but I'm always on the look out to learn better ways of documenting my quilts. I have learned that it is very difficult to see what you are taking pictures of on the screen of a smart phone in the day light. If you have any suggestions for photographing your quilts, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.


If you are interested in reading more about the journey to this TGIFF be sure to check out these other postings.
Getting My Sew-Jo at the Expo, where I first fell in love with the stripes.
So Yeah, This Happened Today, which I could have titled, The First Cut is the Deepest! 
A Quilty Coaster Ride, where find out what a thrill designing my own quilt can be.
Finding Time, cause we could all use some more sewing and design time.
 Here is the link to the video that I used for irregular binding.