You know, I had fully intended to write a blog post about each of these quilts. I really did. However, I logged in to work on the Winter Wall Quilt post and realized that I finished that quilt about a year ago. Ugh. Good job, me.
That post is, clearly, scrapped and since I only completed three quilts in 2018, that means you get a round-up post instead. Huzzah!
Winter Wall Quilt
The Winter Wall quilt was made adapting a pattern of the same name from The Weekend Quilter: Fabulous Quilts to Make in a Weekend by Rosemary Wilkinson. The original pattern is for a twin sized bed, but my big 2018 purchase was a full sized bed. This quilt is likely more of a queen size, but I prefer my quilts to drape off the edges of the bed. It covers up the rumpled sheets that I tried to smooth out at 5 am, you know?
The quilt top is made from an assortment of recycled clothing fabrics and discarded stash from my mom’s old fabrics. During college especially, I made a habit of saving the fabric from jeans and button down shirts that were no longer able to be mended or worn without significant holes. Part of the reason why I decided to make a quilt for my new bed was to use up that stash that had been building for over ten years. It wasn’t the easiest thing to sew all these different fabrics together. My sewing machine wasn’t 
always happy about going from a typical quilting cotton to a thick denim, especially when sewing the rows together, but I’m please with the result. The border on this quilt is made from an old fitted sheet from my twin bed. The back is a considerable amount of black cotton fabric that an Instagram/podcast-follower volunteered to send to me for the price of postage while clearing out some old stash from her craft room.
I used the tie method of quilting for this quilt, just because it was so big and cumbersome. I do like the look of it, but I have had problems with my cotton ties untying in parts of the bed where I sit or that move a lot. If I tie another quilt, I’ll have to look into either a tie material that’s less slippery or tie them with longer ends so that they can be re-tied.
This quilt is also the first time I tried a flanged binding. I loved using this kind of binding. There’s considerably less hand sewing and it’s much more forgivable in terms of visible stitching on the front of the quilt. This has become my preferred quilt binding technique in 2018.
While I’m pleased with all the quilts I finished in 2018, this one holds a special place for me. Because it’s almost entirely made from recovered fabrics and destash, it’s seems to me like this is the closest to the spirit of historical quilting. There’s something very satisfying about that. I haven’t examined that too closely, but I think part of my aim in 2019 will be to work through stash. Instead of supplementing my stash with too many impulse fabric buys, I think I’d rather prefer recovering fabric from damaged/unmendable clothing as my main source of quilt materials. I don’t think I’ll ever be a capital-Q Quilter, but I think using quilting as a way to use recovered fabrics will be really satisfying.
The Half Square Triangle Quilt!
This quilt was one of the craft projects that saved my sanity while I was dealing with 
considerable hand pain. The simple shapes, the simple lines to sew and assemble, and the experimenting in machine quilting was a balm to my unhappy brain chemicals over many months in 2018. It was so important to me that I hosted an HST QAL in the Ravelry group for my podcast folks. A few people joined, which I’m grateful for, but it wasn’t very popular amongst my knitting viewers. I mean, I know it’s not for everyone, but I felt really encouraged when a couple of folks joined me.
Honestly, this quilt is one that I’ve been keeping at the end of my bed all winter because it just makes me happy. It’s sort of a manifestation of all the brightness and joy I needed in my life while I’ve been experiencing a lot of physical pain and stress over the last year.
Halloween Strip Diamond Quilt
This was the last quilt I finished in 2018, but if I’m remembering correctly, this is one that I started in 2017. A while back I had the idea that it would be more fulfilling for me to finish a number of quilt tops before taking the time to finish the rest of the quilt assembly. Maybe that’s what I needed at the time, but I don’t think I’m in that place anymore. By the end of 2018, I was just looking for something that I could feasibly finish to get those PROJECT: DONE endorphins.
This quilt top was sitting around in my collection of quilt tops and I was reorganizing my fabrics at the same time, which happily resulted in finding that Halloween plaid backing fabric. I had originally purchased it to make a button down shirt, but I know myself better than I did and I’m not comfortable wearing shirts in full bright colors like that. Halloween plaid is perfect, however, for quilt backing fabric and within a few days, I had this quilt sandwich under the needle of my machine. It was done with freeform quilting – lots of experimenting and motif exploration – and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.
So that’s it! Those are the quilts that I finished in 2018! It’s March now and I’m still not sure of my quilt plans for this year, but I’m looking forward to any of those projects that ping my inspiration.
