My first picnic

We have been enjoying outdoor concerts this summer, especially in the evenings. It is a great time to spend with friends and family and a little extra playground time is always a plus. It is also a great excuse to use my new picnic quilt.

I cut the striped print on the bias for the binding and then sewed it with my machine instead of by hand. It makes me a little crazy to do it now that I am hooked on hand sewn bindings but I needed the binding to go on fast and to be nice and secure.




And here are some close ups of the quilting, which I did on my new-to-me long arm machine! This is my first quilt that I quilted on the long arm so there is some extra special excitement about it.


The big secret I have been keeping is that I bought a long arm quilting machine. It is not that I was intentionally keeping a secret as much as I have been too busy practicing to talk about the machine. I scored the machine on Craigslist - it is 20 years old and the bare bones Kenquilt model and it makes me so happy. I have a lot to learn and a lot of practicing to do but it is just so awesome.

A Picnic Quilt

I have been collecting vintage sheets for a while now, with the idea that I could use them to make simple picnic quilts. I wanted to keep the piecing of the quilt tops simple enough that it wouldn't make me too anxious to actually use them.

This quilt is big - 75" x 75", made up of 25 15" blocks. This quilt is perfect for lying on the beach and has plenty of room for a lot of friends, but it is really big. Next time, I will definitely make the blocks smaller so the finished quilt is closer to 60" square. That seems a more manageable size.

After I bind it, I am going to play around with making a carrier for it that involves velcro and a shoulder strap.

The yellows in the prints came out a little muted. Once this baby is finished, I will do a proper photo shoot outside.