THE QUILT TOP IS DONE!!

The feeling that comes with finishing a crazy quilt top is almost too awesome to put into words.  The preparation, math, graphing, gathering the fabrics and THEN the ironing, sewing and embellishing.  I guess the smile says it all!

This quilt incorporates a small quilt from a hand sewing class in the center and 12 crazy quilt squares done on a sewing machine along with sashing and borders.  We added the hearts on the center squares to tie in the colors.   (If you look closely, you’ll see horses on one of the fabrics!)

Crazy quilts from a long time ago were done by hand and were often lifetime quilts.  Using scraps from clothing and incorporating memories from sometimes several generations.  You will find antique utility quilts and also the more celebrated specialty fabric quilts.  Any fabric from cottons to velvets were used.  The hand stitching was very labor intensive.  The centers are usually pentagons which allows fabrics to be added around in a circle.  One piece overlapping the last.  Of course, as soon as I say pentagons were used you will find one where it wasn’t. If you do, please share a picture.  Crazy quilts are wonderful since no two will ever be alike.

Even a crazy quilt done by machine takes a lot of time!  The foundation is muslin and we made sure there weren’t raw edges so this can be used.  There was a lot of ironing involved also.

The ongoing joke is that what we do shouldn’t be called SEWING.  It should be called…. Cut, Iron and THEN SEWING!!

This was definitely the case with this project!   Each square has anywhere from 12-17ish pieces of fabric x 12 squares!  All sewn down and THEN had the specialty stitches added from the machine.  That’s quite a commitment.

This has turned into a lovely quilt top that already holds a lot of memories!