Commission #1 - Shirley's Quilt

As I began the 2017 year, I sorta' made a deal with myself that I would not do any more commissions for people because it creates such a stress. I am a notorious procrastinator, and I know the folks want their quilts done promptly, yet I have such difficulty with actually diving in and getting these projects going. Such a conundrum.

For whatever reason, I need to spend mental time on these projects, thinking through some of the necessary steps or individual oddities each one presents. Most of the commissions I've done have been t-shirt quilts, but even those require some 'figuring out' - brain time, if you will.

Even with my resolve to say no, I have said yes to two commissions. Commission #1 is for long-time family friend Shirley, and I shared a little bit about it in this post from last Wednesday. My mental problem-solving mostly concerned the many 3-D items that were to be incorporated into this quilt. I have worked on it very diligently since Wednesday, and finally have a quilt top ready.

Before I layer this top with a backing and batting, I still have a couple of small details to tend to. First, the petticoat under the baby dress (first block, top row) needs to be tacked down in a few places. I don't want it to fall so far down into the block under it. I also need to add a snap or a velcro dot to the center of the pocket (last block, bottom row). That plain gray fabric forms a pocket in front of the white block under it, and when I put the remaining items in the pocket, it gaps open quite a bit. It will look a lot nicer with the contents of the pocket contained by a fastener.

For finishing, I have some white backing fabric set aside for this quilt, and I will use the same red calico that are my sashing strips for binding. It will finish in the neighborhood of 59" x 76".

The current round of mental work has been deciding about how to quilt it. With so many objects to work around, I knew it would be too much to ask of a long-arm quilter to fuss with it. My solution is to straight-line quilt it. I have looked around different places for some inspiration, and I have seen some that were quilted with straight lines set roughly 3 inches apart. I like this, as I think less quilting density will be best for this quilt; I will just stop the lines when I run into a 3-D object.

The plan going forward it to make the quilt 'sandwich" this evening, and then quilt on it tomorrow and Wednesday.

Speaking of tomorrow, Terry is having us in to sew at her house. I don't know that I will take this project. It might just be easier to do here at home, so for sewing at her house, perhaps I will get back to working on my June UFO. It's been awhile since I've done any significant work on it.

Happy Quilting, Friends!