My Largest Accomplishment – A Gigantic Quilt!

For almost two years, I have been lucky enough to participate in the Grace Company’s focus groups. They are great fun, and we have become a little quilting community. Last year, my friend Susan and I were asked to help coordinate a quilt that our community could make together. We came up with a few blocks for everyone to make. The thought was that every quilter could make one, two, or all three block patterns and send them to Grace. Everyone was asked to include their name and location on the block somewhere. Then, an awesome sewist at Grace would put the blocks together into one large community quilt! We came up with three different blocks for the community quilt.

The Thread Spool Block

First, we knew we wanted a notion for a quilt block. There were so many choices and we debated on what type of notion. Scissors? Pins? A pin cushion? There are many free patterns available on Gathered.how, but we ultimately used a spool pattern that Susan found.

It’s cute and easy to sew, and like the other quilt blocks for the community quilt, it was a great stash buster. The pattern was free when we created the community quilt, but it is now available for sale on the Quilt in a Day website here.

The House Quilt Block

A home quilt block is the perfect way to represent home-based quilters. We tried many different patterns, and even tried a few from EQ8, but we both ended up loving this free pattern from Fat Quarter Quilt Shop! You can find it here.

The Longarm Quilt Block

I wanted a sewing machine pattern, but more than that, I wanted it to resemble a longarm machine. That’s a bit hard with a 12 x 12 block, since you can’t make it wider to really represent the long throat space. I found a few different sewing machine block patterns for inspiration and tweaked them so that it looked more like a longarm machine rather than a sewing machine. I came up with this, and it resembles a Q’nique 16x a bit.

The Construction

Once the top was pieced, the quilt top and backing fabric were sent to me to be quilted. At the time, I was still using my original Cutie frame and my 19x Elite. I asked if I could do all-over swirls, and Jaclyn said yes! That’s my favorite way to cover an entire quilt with free motion quilting, so I was thrilled!

I didn’t realize how large this quilt was going to be. It wasn’t until I got it on my frame that I realized how HUGE it was! It ended up being 9 blocks wide by 12 blocks long. With the blocks being 12″ x 12″, that’s approximately 108″ x 144″!

This project very clearly proved that you can quilt any size quilt top on a Cutie frame. The only limitation I had was that at some point, the quilt roll became so heavy that it was tough to re-hoop the quilt all by myself. My husband held one side of the quilt roll while I held the other side to re-hoop the quilt from side to side.

Once I got closer to the bottom of the quilt, I reversed it so that the bottom was on top and the top was on the bottom. It made re-hooping easier; it was much easier to move again since the roll wasn’t as large or heavy. This also freed up throat space, making it much easier to finish the quilting.

The best part was that I didn’t have to try to trim, square up, or bind the quilt! I don’t have the space in my quilt room to do that!

Hanging it up!

Once the binding was done, at the Grace Company, it was ready to be hung up! This is displayed in the Grace Company’s new headquarters, specifically in their classroom space. It was so large that they needed the power lift for it. I’m eager to travel to Utah and take a class in person, so I can see it hanging on the wall!

Grace Company’s Spring Fling

Have you heard of the Spring Fling? It’s a virtual quilt show hosted by the Grace Company, and this year’s event will be held on April 3rd and 4th. You can register for the event here. Registering gets you included in the giveaways, and you can then view the entire quilt show schedule. The community quilt has its own segment! Susan and I were both interviewed for the segment. The segment, titled “Community Through Quilting,” will be shown on Thursday, April 3rd, at 12:45 PM (MDT). I’m on the East Coast, so it’s 2:45 PM my time (EDT).

I hope you take a few minutes to watch and let me know what you think of the segment!!

Thanks for reading this week’s blog. Happy quilting!!
Didi