Sugaridoo QAL completion

In late 2019 I stumbled across the Bernina Blog, and a quilt-a-long by Irene from Sugaridoo.  I very much enjoyed doing a much more 'modern' style of quilt than I usually do, and watching Irene's videos.

Irene kept us busy each month with a new row, and by November last year I finally had all the rows done.  The quilt was massive - about 70" by 90", but happily Irene showed two methods for putting the quilt together - as one big quilt top to quilt as per usual, or doing it in three pieces, and joining the thirds together after quilting.  With a recent interest in quilt-as-you-go and similar techniques, not to mention limited throat space in my Bernina 1130, I decided to give the quilting in sections method a go.

The quilt was so big I barely had room to pin it all together.  Of course, I could have basted the quilt in sections, but the wideback I was using was just the right size, so pinned everything together, then cut the wadding and backing apart.

For quilting, I decided to do something I hadn't tried before, and used the serpentine stitch (#4 on the 1130) with the walking foot.  I staggered the start of each row of stitching so that they didn't have to look identical, and I varied the distance between each row, with some close together and others further apart.  

It wasn't very technical, and ignored the quilt pattern completely, but it was fun to do, and I think the one design helps not to distract from the overall quilt.  

Soon all the quilting was done.  But the quilt was still in 3 pieces... 

I watched Irene's YouTube video more than once, before I started trimming the quilt sections.

First, I took the middle section of the quilt and trimmed both long sides (which needed to be joined to the top and bottom sections) so the backing and wadding were flush with the quilt top.  

Slightly scary.  

Next, I took the top part of the quilt, and trimmed the backing and batting (on the long end that was to be joined to the middle section) so that they extended 1/2 inch past the quilt top.

I then pinned the backing out the way, and trimmed the batting in line with the quilt top.

As I was going to lose half an inch in the quilt when joining the two sections together (using a quarter inch seam), I then moved the quilt top out the way and trimmed an additional half an inch from the batting.  This would hopefully mean the batting from the top and middle sections would meet each other nicely and not add bulk to the join.

This left me with a quilt top section that was 1/2 inch longer than the batting, but 1/2 inch shorter than the backing.  

I repeated the whole thing for the bottom section of the quilt, along the long edge that would join the middle section. 

It was time to wrestle with the quilt.  I pinned the top and middle sections together, quilt tops only, and sewed them together.  I ironed the top and you couldn't even tell they had been quilted in sections.  Turn the thing over though, and it was all still open and exposed.  This is when one of my least favorite thing to do was required.  Hand sewing.  

I try to avoid hand sewing wherever possible.  I don't mind hand sewing the back of a binding, as it finishes off a quilt, but that is about it.  And probably the only think I dislike more than hand sewing is applique.  

Anyway... I needed to hand sew the wadding sections together.  I could have used a fusible tape or something, but I thought I would give the sewing a go first.  

And it turns out I quite like hand sewing batting together.  It is probably something to do with the fact there is no requirement to have neat stitches or make it look nice.  The only thing I had to worry about was not sewing through the quilt top, and I whizzed through this part. 

This left me with the backing, which had a 1/2 inch overlap.  I folded it under about a quarter or an inch, and then proceeded to hand sew it down.

Less fun, I'll admit, and it took a few work nights to get it done.  I then took the two joined sections back to the machine and sewed a couple of serpentine lines through the join.  

It was a little tricky manipulating the quilt for just this bit, so I was very glad I was using this QAYG method and most of the quilting had already been done.

I did the exact same thing to join the bottom third to the (now) top and middle section.

All that was left to do was add the label had made and the binding.

Yay!  All together.  I decided to be a bit funky with the binding, machine sewing a white binding to the top and bottom of the quilt, then adding a custom pieced binding to each side, so that the binding changed from red to orange to yellow to match each row.  I had to fudge it for one row though, as there was not enough of the particular shade of red to cut out anything for the binding.

I've recently started decorating the house with my quilts, rather than leave them hidden in the wardrobe.  So I think I will leave this one hanging over my door for now.

And I've already cut out and started piecing a "one block wonder".  I am not sure what it is going to turn out like yet, but I am almost certainly going to incorporate some QAYG.  And it is not going to be quite as big as this quilt was.