Even with the absence of a Project list for 2019 and deciding that I would have a take it easy year, I'm still surprisingly have been staying focused on finishing last year projects and making new quilts with the once new fabrics which have been waiting for the right projects. I'm thinking that the ever present squirrels in my studio have a good quilting conscience who are prompting me to sew the right thing. In March, after finishing one of the "haf-to-do" quilts on my mental plate, I thought some fun with something new was in order. But then the mood for me to finally finish the Women of the Bible Quilt hit me, or maybe in this case was divine intervention, and I knew the time was right to sew it all together.
The Women of the Bible Quilt (or I renamed the Bible Quilt) was started at the beginning of 2016 with my good quilting friend Dee and we decided to join a QAL on Facebook hosted by Crafty Threads. Each week, we received a free online pattern for either a 15" or 10" block which was inspired by one of the women in the Bible. There were forty blocks and the goal was to finish all of the blocks by mid October and to put the top together by the end of the year.
I chose to make my quilt with bright fabrics since I had purchased a large stash of Crazy Mom's Good Neighbor fabric when it came out in 2015 and also had a fat quarter collection of Emily Herrick's Technicolor fabrics. I also included some other fabrics from Riley Blake, Moda and Connecting Thread. Since the quilt was all about the Women of the Bible, I wanted to make sure the quilt had a feminine feel and was able to find some multi-color floral prints which tied in all of the other colors.
There were twelve 15" blocks and twenty-eight 10" blocks. I started the QAL with good intentions but did not finish all of the blocks until the end of 2016. Once again, I did a QAL Escape Artist thing by modifying three of the last blocks just to get them done. You can read about the finishing of the blocks then here and surprisingly some of my hesitation had to do with Gypsy Wife. An interesting note is that the Bible Quilt was started before my blog and there were name calling for some of these blocks between Dee and I.
I decided to set the blocks, sampler style, most likely inspired by my then recently finished Classic Meets Modern Quilt and laid out the blocks in four quadrants. In order to do this, I had to sew an additional 10" block.
After adding the 8" borders and cornerstones which made a very large quilt, 85" x 95", my plan was to send this quilt to Nancy of Grace and Peace Quilting in Minnesota. The top was finished the first week in March but I waited until last week to send it to her because I was waiting for the snow to end which in the Midwest did not stop until early May. I thought it would be safe but then we had all those tornadoes and my fear of my quilt strewned across the highway from an overturned truck was still very real. My prayers were answered when my quilt arrived safely both to and from.
Nancy did a wonderful job with the machine quilting, it's either Figure Eight or Wishbone using the perfect shade of pink thread which matched the pink stripe binding. (You can read Nancy's post about this quilt here). The turnaround from sending and receiving the quilt was just eight days and once I received the quilt back this past Thursday, the binding was hand sewn by that evening. I haven't hand sewn binding in quite awhile and I thought it was going to take at least eight hours but was surprised that it took less than four hours. The 108" wide backing is also from the Good Neighbor line and I'm glad I purchased it when I bought the other fabrics.
I was thinking that I was going to have to rely on Nancy's photos of my quilt since she always takes nice photos of quilts hanging from her deck since I was worried that I wouldn't be able to take a full photo of the quilt because of its size and would have been too much for the Master and Apprentice Quilt Holder to handle. But then I remember hanging the Slinky Quilt from the screen room gutters. The Master Quilt Holder appreciated that he didn't have to hold up this quilt and listen to my being Quiltzilla and boy did those nine boot clips do the job. I also had an epiphany while the Master Quilt Holder was standing on the step ladder hanging up the quilt and realized that I don't need a clothes line after all; good news for him since he's been resisting my request, aka whining, for the past few years.
After a little more than three years from the start of this quilt, the Bible Quilt is a wonderful, finally finish. It's seems like it took forever and am glad there's a little less guilt in the studio now. My original intention was to give it to my son and his wife but I've since changed my mind; it's going to be for my beloved and very quilt-spoiled granddaughter's bed when she visits. This amazing technicolor quilt is just perfect for a little girl. BTW, before posting, I did an online search to see if anyone is offering a QAL or free Women of the Bible block patterns but could only find ones available for purchase.
It seems that more often than not I'm going to mention something about the weather, it's still crazy with lots of rain, warm and days of sunshine are few and far between. Today, we finally switched our bedding to the Summer quilts and this is the latest we've ever did this.
Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation NTT and Meadow Mist Designs, Favorite Finish
