September | 2012 | Sew Frou Frou Quilter

I must be delusional to think that I can whip something easy up quickly. I seem to do this to myself every other project. (I apparently read too many sewing blogs where everything turns out beautiful.)

I started quilting the robot star quilt–it’s not going well. Here it is basted

So far so good.

It went downhill after that. I spent 2 hours machine quilting with a cream-colored thread. I had originally envisioned doing something different in each triangle and doing some echo quilting in the blue Kona sections. It was horrid. I’m fine if I use my presser foot as my guide but when I try to use the seam guide to quilt in wider swaths, things just go askew.

So I spent 4 hours and ripping out the unfortunate quilting and posted it on my local modern quilt guild’s site to ask for suggestions since these women are super talented and everything I’ve seen them do is exceptional. So many wonderful suggestions–most involving FMQ (cue scary music) which I’ve never attempted. I do need to try FMQ but I’m not ready to do that on a baby quilt that I want to give as a gift soon (–um like last week soon). At the rate I’m going, I should have just hand quilted it. I would have had better control at least.

So last night, I went back to the drawing board. I’ve got 3 echo lines done inside the star with a blue variegated thread–I’m ripping out the inner outline because I just couldn’t keep my seam guide where I wanted it. Once I get that line of thread ripped out, I guess I’ll draw all my lines on and go back to using my presser foot as my guide since that’s what works for me. On the upside, I’ve finally figured out how to pull my top thread to the top so that I don’t get a big nest on the back.:)

I did an embroidered label for this quilt too and it’s ready to go as soon as the quilting is done.

The label-I put a robot on my t-shirt for this one.

I’m still trying to decide what to do for the binding. I toyed with the idea of doing continuous prairie points around the entire quilt but I think maybe I should do that another time after I practice it on something little first (seeing as how the quilting has delayed me). Which fabric would you choose for the binding? I pretty much have plenty of each except for the orange argyle and the brown with blue dots. I have a lot of the striped fabric (an organic cotton from Robert Kaufman that I got on sale at Crimson Tate)–this fabric is so soft -perfect for a baby quilt.

Well, off to seam ripping…

Some good friends of my husband just had another baby -their second boy. I was thrilled that they had a boy because that meant I finally have a use for the Caleb Gray robot fabric that my son did not want for his quilt. I love this fabric and have been anxious to use it. (I was ready to make a girl quilt though with some Walk in the Woods fabric by Aneela Hooey though if I had to.)

I used the Vintage Star Tutorial by Jeni Baker of In Color Order. I followed it loosely –I made my blocks 10 inches and I just went on my own with colors and just used what I had that went together. This was my first time doing HST’s. I think the top went together pretty quickly all things considered. (Does anyone else hate actually cutting their fabric? I’m always worried that I’m going to mess up and I never find that my squares look even after the first cut. There’s definitely something to be said for pre-cuts.) I now recognize why some people press their seams open. I did press the seams open for the HST’s but pressed the seams within the rows to the side thinking it would be easier to nest my seams–so needless to say, I have some very bulky points in the middle of the star.

Lil Bee was very excited about this quilt and has many “better” ideas for the next robot quilt that I make. I’ll show you the finished top in my next post.