Drew's Peace Corp Quilt - Quilted 06/28, Bound 07/01/2013

  Drew's quilt top is just stunningly beautiful. "It's very special to her (Emily). We were in the Peace Corps together in Togo, West Africa, and whenever she had something made-a skirt, a dress, or pillow cases, she would save the scraps. When she left the country (before me) I cut them up into squares and had a tailor piece them together. So that's the story." 
  The piecing was done in Africa by tailor Madame Pasteur--that's what everyone called her because she was the wife of the pastor.
  Drew is getting this quilted for Emily's June 27th birthday. If we don't finish in time he will just point her here to the blog. (06/28: And that is exactly what he did.)

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More about this quilt,
Emily & Drew
as supplied by Drew

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quilt_story.docx
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Preparation

May 30: Drew called to make first contact. His mom will help as much as possible.
Jun 02: Received these incredible photos. Can you tell I am excited?
Jun 11: Drew now has his backing, binding & batting. His mom helped with fabric selection. He has decided I will finish the project for him. I have cleared my queue so I can get started as soon as it arrives.
Jun 17: The quilt is here. I got several notes with the quilt, one saying "the top is not totally square" & "it will be a strangely shaped finished piece". There are also significant places  where it is not flat enough to quilt as is. It only took a moment to see that the problem is that a slinky fabric should have been interfaced. May also have been a result of the prewashing after piecing. Either way, I will take out a couple of the larger pieces, interface them & then put them back in. It should be okay after that. I may have to do that for two other fabrics too. We'll see.
Jun 18: Working on getting the quilt top to lay flat. I need to remove the bulky hem around the edge. I also need to remove a handful of blocks and interface them with fusible stabilizer & of course reinsert them. A few seams need to be trimmed down to fit better.
  I have removed & fused one block so far. Stopped to remove the hem. I have made a first pressing on low heat on the back. There are quite a few twisted seams & I may fix some of them. I was warned this is not cotton & to be careful ironing. Even on low heat, the fabric is nice to work with & the double folded hem was easy to press out.
Jun 19: Started working on a couple blocks but then had to remove more and more & refit them together. Finished about 2 feet at one end of the top. There is a lot more to do, more than I thought at first. I want to preserve things the way they came to me as much as possible but still have a nice finished quilt.
Jun 20: Just finished third day fixing places not flat enough to quilt. Still have two more to do tomorrow. Hopefully then I can move on to piecing the backing.
Jun 21: Note that Drew is not a quilter so all this talk about flat vs. waves is news to him. LOL - he'll know a whole lot more about quilting before we are finished. We all will since I learn something on every project I do. 
   Drew has narrowed his IQ pattern choice to three--Swirls 2, Spiral Square or Curly Q. I don't think Spiral Square will do so well on this but like the other two. There are a couple of ways I can do Curly Q. I also found a few more African themes for Drew to consider.
   Started on the backing but realized I did not ask Drew for enough. Couldn't find what I needed online based on the salvage notes & every combination of keywords I could put together. I did find it in other colors.
Jun 22: Tenacious, I tried again this morning & found exactly what I need--Timeless Treasures Benartex 2724-27 Day Dreamer - Hourglass Geo - Saffron. Whew! It will ship today. Finally got around to taking some quilt top pictures. I wanted to do some overlays and certainly can't do this quilt layout in EQ7. BTW: Drew is also sending the needed backing fabric in addition to what I ordered so it will definitely match the dye lot. Until that gets here, I will piece what I have and get the binding ready. Since the backing amounts to matching plaids, I am going to use fusible interfacing to line things up in one direction before sewing. Hopefully the other direction will behave nicely. Time will tell.
Jun 23: Working on backing and making binding.
Jun 25: Added photo details of how I will pseudo-square this quilt and why.
Jun 26: The rest of the backing fabric came in. The backing is pieced & the quilt is loaded. Thread selection time. I need a color that works on the back too so that limited my color choices significantly. I selected So Fine! #50 #422 MUSTARD.It is a dull yellow so I am hoping it will blend nicely. I will be winding my own bobbins to get a perfect match.

HINT: If you right click on an image, select to Open link in new tab (or new window), click on that tab/window & then zoom in (type & hold Ctrl key while typing the + key several times does this on my PC), you can see detail. Ctrl with - key zooms back out.

Quilting

Jun 26: The rest of the backing fabric came in. The backing is pieced & the quilt is loaded. Thread selection time. I need a color that works on the back too so that limited my color choices significantly. I selected So Fine! #50 #422 MUSTARD.It is a dull yellow so I am hoping it will blend nicely. I will be winding my own bobbins to get a perfect match.
Jun 27: Quilting day starting with setting the thread tension & basting the top. Remember that the top will look wonky on the edges but that is temporary. WAIT - Things temporarily on hold. I may have missed the intention of a 3" border that I have not added.
Jun 28: No border. While basting, it was clear the thread color I selected was going to show more than I though. I switched to So Fine! #50 #424 CHOCOLATE and the stitching blended in much better. I also switched to a Bottom Line Light Yellow for the bobbin & was actually able to get the tension set so Chocolate did not show on the back and Light Yellow did not show on the top. The tricky part here is that as the tension on the fabric changes due to its unevenness, the tension on the thread may be affected too. If we use the Mustard like I originally planned, those Safari stripes will show up a lot more which could be a good thing. Just a matter of preference. I want to quilt today but I will wait until 3 or so to hear back from Drew. HA! Phone is ringing. Chocolate and Light Yellow it is.
   Quilting at last. The thread is definitely blending in so these very special fabrics are not diminished. The quilting is going very well. I am "stabilizing" the areas with my hands as I go that I did/could not do earlier. I also have a surprise for Drew that I have been considering for several days. Oops. Spoke too soon. Had to take a long tuck and got a few puckers on row 4. Both were unavoidable. And quilted. Bed photos and binding tomorrow.
Jun 29: Squared quilt. Attached binding. Started hand binding.
Jun 30: Hand binding. 1/2 done.
Jul 01: Finished!