Quilting! Took me almost 40 years to find a hobby that completely feels like me when I'm doing it.
Mostly just to remind myself how many steps are involved in making a quilt:
1. Design: finding a pattern the inspires me; choosing a colour scheme that I adore. Or drawing my own design in a graph paper sketchbook.
2. Fabric shopping: one of my favourite parts of this whole process; matching the inspiration fabric with complimentary components for the entire design.
3. Readying the fabric: sometimes I wash it first and then iron it; other times I only iron it with spray starch to get that big factory crease out of the middle, and any other fold lines or wrinkles. Starched fabric is easier to cut and handle sometimes than pre-washed fabric. Ironing, always ironing: so much ironing in quilting!
4. Cut: following the pattern or generating a basic block -- or improvising -- to make all the pieces that are required to form the quilt top. (I stick to basic patterns, but one small quilt required way more than 100 squares.)
5. Piece: sew together the cut pieces into a block or strip or other design element. Iron tiny seams to make pieces flat for ease of combining into blocks. Then sew all blocks or strips together to make the entire quilt top. More ironing.
6. Border: measure the quilt and calculate the border material needed. So much math in quilting. From the design stage to the very end. Math! And much more ironing in border stage too. Some people like to do double borders, but that means you have to do this entire step twice.
7. Backing: pick a fabric for the backing. Options: buy the extra-wide fabric so it covers the entire quilt back; piece large swaths of the same material to make a complete back; add an interesting element to the back covering that echoes the front design; piece large fabric sections; complete another quilt for the back so that it becomes a reversible project.
8. Sandwich: place the front, batting, and backing together, smooth it all down carefully, trying to avoid bulges and wrinkles.
9. Baste: special, large, curved safety pins work well for basting a quilt sandwich together. basting is crucial to avoid slippage, which causes warps, bulges, wrinkles. You can also thread baste by hand or machine, if it's a smaller project.
10. Quilt: the word "quilting" refers to the process of securing the layers together. I use machine quilting. Free-motion quilting is fun. I think I'll stick to mostly straight line quilting for my next couple projects.
11. Bind: step 11? So many steps! Cut and iron (more ironing!) binding fabric, and attach it to the quilt: by "attach" I mean sew it on all the way around once, mitre the corners, then sew around again to attach it on the other side of the quilt. Some people hand stitch the second step, but I use matchy thread and machine stitch both times. Sometimes I buy double bias binding tape for this step. Next project, though, gets a fancy binding.
12. Wash: I try to use very secure stitching for usable quilts, so I wash them in the machine with hot water and hope that they hold up.
13. Dry: use pretty hot temperature because I like the crinkly look it gives the quilt.
14. Iron (optional): if it's a very crinkly quilt, probably doesn't need a final ironing, but a little touch-up can make it look nice if it's going to be a present.
15. Photograph and archive on Instagram.
16. Gift to a friend.
Phew! And each step requires a whole bunch of little steps, of course. No wonder it takes me so long to make one lap quilt.
