Completed: A Black, White, and Red Quilt

I was kind of laughing about it the other day when I was thinking about quilting.  When I first thought of quilting, years back, I thought it was something only little old ladies did when they had nothing else to do.  Turns out I was very wrong about that.  Anyone can quilt and it is actually pretty fun!  I might be very slow at it, but it isn’t my number one sewing priority most days.  However, it was my number one priority this weekend.

I finally, finally got my first full sized quilt done.  Full sized meaning bigger than a crib quilt or throw quilt, which I have made both before.  Despite the size, this one was pretty easy to make though.  There was a lot of work involved, and I had plenty of hands to help with it.  This was a group effort and I enjoyed every minute spent with some wonderful ladies while making it.

I would say the hardest part was matching up the stencil lines where I ended and where I began.  I had to draw my own lines in a few places because things just weren’t gonna line up otherwise.  The borders were added to give the blanket a bit more length and it was a good thing because now it will lie nicely on my bed.  The thing that took the most time, aside from my procrastinating with that stenciled border, was waiting for the backing.  I ordered flannel for it and a great big piece of it.  It took several months to get that in because apparently flannel is pretty popular in the winter time.  It keep being on back order.  Everything else came together very nicely and had I worked on this more than just once a week, occasionally, it would have surely been done much faster.

A little bit on that red flannel.  It is red, and even though I prewashed it, it bled through some on the white part of the border.  A few of the white parts throughout the center got a little pink also.  I didn’t use batting for this quilt, just the flannel, so where the border stitches are directly touching the backing, there is a reddish line.  I’m a little bugged by this, but it isn’t gonna keep me up at night.  I will get one of those color catcher sheets for the next time I wash it and see if it helps.  It actually doesn’t look too bad.  I wanted a black, white, and red quilt after all.  (At least that is what I am telling myself.)

If it does bug me enough, it won’t be hard to take off the white border and then rebind it down to the black.  I’m pretty sure it won’t come to that though.  It will get used just fine, red lines and all.  😉

So, yes, it is done, and now to think of the next quilt.  I keep pinning quilt pictures over on my Pinterest account because I have so many cotton fabric remnants from all these dresses I keep making.  I think I have an idea of what to do next.  Which is great because I hate throwing fabric scraps away.

Details:  The quilt pattern was from the book

and my pattern was called Diamonds?… Rubies?