Yes, I Did!

Way back in February I put up this post where I said I was going to make a quilt. It's got a picture of yards and yards of fabric that needed to be cut into squares. By the end of that month I actually had all 900 squares cut. You can see that pile at the end of this post. They sat for a while before I assembled some of the 3 layer sandwiches. The first ones were completed just before I wrecked Beulah the minivan of love. Then they sat until the end of July or so when was able to sit at a sewing machine for long enough periods to get anything done. I figured I'd better kick it up a notch or two to get this thing done in time for Diana to take it to college. Then I began running into a few roadblocks, not the least of which was the "Great Spackle Incident."

Monday I finished sewing. Tuesday I began the arduous task of clipping all the raw edges. Since this is a rag quilt the seams are left unfinished on the top and then clipped every half inch or so in order that when it is washed those edges fray, giving it a fuzzy appearance. The clipping took a much longer time than I anticipated. I am glad I was smart enough to invest in this spring loaded set of snips which automatically open back up after you take a snip, otherwise I might still be clipping.

After finishing the clipping late Tuesday morning (did I mention we had to leave to take Diana to school at 3:00 pm?) I dashed off to a couple of last minute errands then the laundromat to wash and dry the quilt so as to remove spackle crud and hasten the fraying. I think my mind was a little frayed so I guess it was good that I found this sign on the washing machines otherwise I may have gotten confused and climbed in myself. Seriously though, makes you wonder what sort of lawsuit occurred that requires this warning now, eh?

No such warnings were posted on the dryers so theoretically you can tumble dry your kids if you hose them off outside first. The quilt took forever to dry. I kept pumping quarters into the machine and cranking it to high heat.

I got home all of 15 minutes before it was time to pile into the truck and take the kid to her dorm. That was just enough time to throw it over the washline and snap a few pictures of the finished product. Here is what the back of the quilt looks like (except that top row flipped over). The back is all neat and tidy with no raw edges showing...

...unlike the front which is all fuzzy.

(There were a couple more pictures of the process before clipping but Blogger is being a pain and won't let me upload anything else right now.)