I finished the Feel Better Blanket a couple of days ago.
This was my first machine quilting project, and one of my first machine sewing projects ever, so be gentle.
If you look closely, you will see that there are literally hundreds of errors in both piecing and quilting, and I am quite certain that the experienced quilters among you are shuddering with horror at the way I resolved some of the many issues I encountered in making this.
For all that, I loved working on this project! I love, love, love the fabrics, which I got in the form of Freebird Charm Packs from Moda Fabrics. I did absolutely nothing fancy, just sewed the individual squares together as they pleased me.
The border is plain red cotton. I used a twin sized cotton quilt batt which I cut to the custom size of this quilt, and the backing is chocolate colored flannel to make it extra cozy.
I discovered that I really enjoy the feel of just sewing straight lines with my lovely old machine, and that playing with beautiful fabrics is just as wonderful as playing with beautiful yarns.
For the quilting, I winged it, ending up with an ad hoc plaid pattern. As you can see, I used contrasting dark brown quilting thread. I did this to tone down the bright colors a touch, since the KH declared them, "almost a little too cheerful." I think it worked well; I like the way the brown stands out against the bright fabrics, even though it makes every little quilting error jump out at you--and there are a lot of quilting errors.
I tried several methods to get the quilting to go smoothly. In the end, I found that I preferred using the original old edging foot that came with my 1962 Pfaff 360. I didn't like the even feed foot I bought, or the straight stitch foot, or the darning foot. But the edging foot has a guide that helped get the lines straight and even, or at least less wobbly and uneven than the other feet, and was smoother and quieter than the even feed foot.
To finish it, I cut off the extra batting and the wrapped the backing forward over the edge batting and folded the red edging backward over the batting and the backing and sewed it down by hand. (For the record, I do know how to make and attach bias binding, but I chose not to in this case.) As you can see, I'm no better at hand sewing than machine sewing, but at least I could do this part sitting on the sofa in front of the tv. I finished it off with a good machine wash and dry to make it all soft and crinkly.
The KH has barely let his "man blankie" out of his sight for the past two days. He carries it from the sofa to his upstairs office to our bed, depending on where he's hanging out. I have resisted calling him "Linus" because that be mistaken for criticism, when it fact it tickles and flatters me that he seems to love this blanket so much!
