When a September Quilt becomes a December Quilt

As quite a few of my 2020 quilt projects ended up as my husband’s and mother-in-law’s quilts, I decided to use dedicate my September quilt to my father-in-law instead.

I also wanted to proceed with my quick curve ruler practice as well. So, I decided to go for the Chic Country quilt pattern by Sew Kind of Wonderful. The pattern was on my to-sew list already and I desperately wanted to try it out.

I am not sure if it is me, but making quilts for men is not always easy. I am usually drawn to bright colors or at least vivid prints. Both would not be an option for this specific quilt. 🙂

Choosing Fabric for a ‘Masculine’ Quilt

After talking about color choices in the family a decision for ‘grey’ was quickly taken. Good that grey matched the patchwork pattern. It also uses grey and another brighter color as an optional addition for setting a highlight.

I did not really have a lot of greys in my fabric stash. Well, now I have, but when I started planning this quilt I definitely did not have the selection of required light and dark grey prints. 

The only nice grey fat quarters I had were from Art Gallery Fabrics. I wanted to use them for a quilt for quite some time already but also did not want to mix them with another type of fabric. For everyone who does not know Art Gallery Fabrics, the quality of these fabrics is simply amazing. They are super soft and smooth, yet easy to sew with. I felt that it would be a sacrilege to mix them with cheaper fabrics in one quilt…

So my only option was to order more grey fat quarters from Art Gallery Fabrics. And now I have quite a stash of them for at least one more quilt project! 😉

Announcing my September Quilt Online

One thing I did differently for this quilt than for all other quilts I had done so far was to announce it as my September quilt project. I had never done this before. Every quilter knows that you start a project, start another one, eventually, come back to the first one, and interrupt again for a third project… It can take years to finish something if you do not have a deadline for it.

But the idea was to post my work progress on Chic Country on the Me + My Craftroom Instagram story. I still think that this is a nice way of showing my followers what I am working on, but it also put a lot of pressure on myself. However, at first, I wanted to be held accountable to share regularly what I was doing. I know that I can finish a quilt project within a month and it is actually a nice feeling to do so. It gives you a certain feeling of accomplishment when you do not drag your quilt projects. 

Then the September Quilt becomes a December Quilt

But life always turned out to come up with a little surprise in September. As I wrote in my first blog post of 2021, we are expecting a little addition to our family in May 2021. It was in September that I found out that I was pregnant. After a few early hick-ups and difficulties, I decided that I just had to take things slow, very slow. So my September quilt became less of a priority for the next three months. 

My main priority actually became sleeping. I literally feel as if I was hibernating between mid-September and mid-December 2020. It is not that I did not do anything at all after work, but nothing was consistent and many days I just slept the whole afternoon.

It was in December that I took up again the Chic Country quilt. Not even the basic blocks were finished at this stage. They were not even squared up yet. And if you read my blog post on the New Mexico quilt you know that I am not a big fan of squaring up blocks either… 

But, it needed to be done and I needed to create space for new, more pressing quilt projects. After all a baby will need a baby quilt and a few other things to be welcomed into this world! 😉

I restarted working on my September quilt on 20 December 2020. Two days later all the blocks were squared and the quilt top was assembled. Thanks to the help of my private barista who provided me with caffeine-free coffee to keep me going. (The quilter’s husband recently took up the hobby of making coffee and working on his latte art. 😉 ) 

Going back Online

On 27 December 2020, I finally prepared my patchwork sandwich to quilt this beauty. I filmed my process of basting the three layers together as a time-lapse and put it on Instagram. And I was simply overwhelmed by the views this little video got. More than 2300 people watched this short clip by now. Considering the fact that Me + My Craftroom does not even have 1000 followers on Instagram yet, this is pretty good.  

This actually gave me a real boost to take my blog more seriously again and to invest time into finishing all my drafted past blog posts. As I outlined in my post on my creative plans for 2021, I also want to take more video footage in 2021 and start a YouTube channel for it. However, the whole setup of my workspace should be a bit more professional for doing this. It will have to wait until we have moved and I have a proper creative space.

Then Me + My Craftroom will become actual space… 🙂 

And Eventually, the September Quilt is quilted in January 2021

As I had prepared several quilts for quilting during the last days of December, I was a bit exhausted and did not start quilting before the new year. I also have to say that my baby bump was already slightly in the way when kneeling on the floor to baste these quilt layers together.

The quilting was done only in January 2021. It was the first time that I attempted to quilt a spiral on a quilt. And It took me two days to quilt my September quilt, mainly due to a lot of interruptions caused by Loki and Wotan. They took shifts of sleeping on the quilt next to the sewing machine. Whenever I moved one of them to another room, the other would come and take his spot. But I have a soft spot for these two and I agree that it was quite cold during the last week. So the spot under the ring light was too tempting for them as a sleeping spot.

Finishing the Chic Country Quilt

When quilting Chic Country I had one issue with my backing, however. I used a grey linen print from Robert Kaufman’s Homespun collection. The piece of fabric was only slightly bigger than my quilt top and despite having it basted together the backing moved while quilting. And it moved so much that I had to cut 2 inches along all sides of the quilt.

I could have cried! So much nice fabric wasted! But I learned from this experience not to be stingy with my backing. I did not want to sew two stripes together to have a bigger piece and just used the width of the fabric. This is definitely a mistake I will not do again.

In total, I worked only 12 days on this quilt. Would I had not interrupted my work several times and would I have not done other projects in parallel, it would have been totally feasible to finish it in September.

Although Chic Country was not finished in September, I still consider it my September quilt. All other months are already taken in 2020 for other quilt projects and I already worked on the January 2021 quilt as well. 

I am happy to hear your feedback on this quilt project. Please comment in the comment box below and let me know what you think.