The Dirty Thirty Quilt

Today is Cristina's 30th Birthday.  She is one of my closest friend and she, unlike me, is not too excited to hit the big 3-0 and she, unlike me, is celebrating in a nice normal fashion- dinner with her boyfriend and then a party at a bar.  Since we aren't going crazy with the celebrating, I decided that I needed to do something special for her for her birthday (especially since she will be traveling for mine).  I had put a nice little gift bag together for her when on Tuesday she let it slip that she'd love to have a quilt to use while watching TV if I ever felt like making one for her.  I also had plans to maybe see her on Thursday- Make an entire quilt in less than 48 hours?  Challenge excepted.

Who would have thought that I'd actually be able to pull it off?!  30 hours after I began the quilt, it was finished.  (Sleep and human interaction is highly overrated anyway...)  I have been thinking recently that I wanted to do more work with hexagons, because apparently I love them.  I also love a quilt that is in Elizabeth Hartman's book that is a white quilt that looks like it has peddles tossed all over it.  I decided to try to combine the idea and attempt to make a quilt that looked like there were hexagons sprinkled over the quilt.  For the most part, I think that I succeeded (especially since I patterned it myself- a first for me!).  Here is my wonky inspiration drawing and my notes that I used during the process.  Not a lot to work from, I know.

Also, since I had such a short amount of time to complete it, that I needed to only use what I had.  Thankfully, I'm pretty familiar with Cristina's aesthetic, so I just went through my stash, picked out stuff I knew she'd like, and cut hexagons using the hexagon template from Fresh Quilts.  The rest of it, I totally winged.  I played with the hexagon template and took all kinds of measurements.  Over all, I'm happy with the pattern (which will, forever be referred to as the Dirty Thirty Quilt), I think there is a little too much white, I think that it suggests what I was going for.  I might actually write up a little tutorial of this later if I'm feeling ambitious.  The back of the quilt is a few different vintagey fabrics that go pretty well together and the binding is actually from a top sheet that I no longer have the mate for...

And now, a word (or a few) about free motion quilting.  This was my first attempt.  At first, I HATED  it.  It was really loud (I thought my neighbors might complain) and really hard to control, the stitch lengths were crazy different, and I broke 5 needles.  And then, like magic, the foot broke.  No, seriously, this medal bar thingie snapped right off, and it was like magic.  Suddenly, it was quiet and controllable and faster (and no more broken needles!).  Maybe they sold me the wrong foot.  Whatever it was, now it's good, so I'm okay with it.  I did sort of curly cues mixed with circles- I wanted it to basically look like I had doodled on it (I even threw in a "Hidden Mickey" for good measure).  For a first outing, I think it went pretty well.

Cash insists on immediately running up and lying on any quilt (or fabric) that I put on the ground- especially when I want to take photos.