Longterm UFO Finish!

Posted by LaDawn on

Whoo-hoo! Finally, a huge finish! This is the Trail Mix quilt from American Patchwork and Quilting magazine in 2004! That year or the next, there were several versions of it in our local Plano quilt show. I loved every one of them. I don’t know exactly when I finally started my own, but I used a book that has a publication date of 2008, so it’s a pretty good bet that I started that year or shortly after. It’s been a long time coming; it’s one of my oldest UFOs (unfinished objects).

If you follow the link above, you will see the original; it would not allow me to post a photo. It’s a queen-sized quilt with LOTS of little pieces. I decided that my version would be very scrappy, but somewhere along the way, I ended up using a majority of reproduction fabrics or fabrics that had that same kind of feel. If you want to see some of the other versions floating around out there, check out my Pinterest board here.

When it came time to put the blocks together, I knew I would need to quilt this in sections. Why? Because I only have a small home machine (a Bernina 440QE), and wrestling with a large quilt on this machine causes all kinds of problems with my fibromyalgia. So first I had to break up how exactly I wanted to do it. I used this book:

Once I knew that, I sewed each section together. This was the part that took years. This quilt was destined for my own bed, therefore it got put into a project container and left there for long periods of time while I worked on quilts and projects that I thought were more important. Every once in awhile I might take it out and admire the blocks, but I rarely worked on it until I joined the online community of Quilting Around the World. They started doing a contest/support group of women trying to get those UFOs done! Trail Mix has been on my UFO list every year.

This year, with the Covid-19 lockdown, I had no excuse. I would finish this one! I put the last stitches in sometime around 10:30 last night, April 30, 2020!

So, I took pictures along the way. Here we go:

Trying to keep track of sections
Refreshing my memory of exactly how to do this. Since I will quilt it to the edges, I will be using a finishing strip. Also, I am going to sew the borders on after the sections are sewn together, so I need to make my backing and batting large enough on the border sides.
And here are the four sections basted and ready for quilting!
Now, I lay it all out on the guest room bed. This is when I discovered I’d made a big goof!
The top right section was not basted properly. I basted it with the border being between the two right sections. I’m not ripping all that quilting out. I’ll just have to fix it.
This shows the goof. This top section has the border on its right and bottom. I’m going to have to cut the bottom border area and sew it to the top.
Being a little paranoid that I will mess up even worse. Checking, checking, checking!
Making sure it’s right, then I am cutting the border off, leaving enough space of the backing to be able to sew the two backing pieces together without having to do a 4 layer seam. I will piece the batting on with fusible batting tape.
Fusible batting along the seam line.
Sewing the sections together with a finishing strip. The finishing strip is like a binding strip, cut at 1 1/4 inches, folded in half, then sewn with the seams.
I trim the batting our of the seam as much as I can, using a pair of very sharp, small embroidery scissors. Once the seam is as un-bulky as I can get it, I fold the finishing strip over the seam and hand sew it down.
This is the hardest part: folding one finishing strip over another. The answer is to trim it as much as possible. And, since I expect this quilt to get a lot of handling and washing, I actually go back and sew over this part with a few small machine stitches.
Like this.
And it is hardly visible on the front.
And this one I had to really hunt for! Also, notice how my quilting lines match up even over the section seam? In my first couple of quilts done in sections, that did not happen! I’m pretty pleased with this!
This is the seam between the sections. Once everything is sewn down and pressed it, it will be even less noticeable.
And the binding begins!
Do you think she is helping? Does SHE think she is helping?
This shows a little bit of the borders and binding.
Completed! Now I just need to figure out how to get a full picture of it.

Did you notice the lump in the last picture? That is my cat, Jet. She loves all of my quilts!

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