Our First Quilt

Miles and I started making a quilt!

It started when we went to the fair last fall. The fair is the kickoff to our homeschool each year and it’s such a lovely place to springboard. They submit everything that they want to that they made the previous year. Hazel always enters loads of crafts and tends to like to enter the baking competitions. Miles really took off this year and submitted some of his MiniMaker Club builds and he thought he would try to enter the biggest zucchini competition. He worked so hard on growing his midsized vegetable. His was on the smaller side but the competition this last year was insane! Our friend took home the rainbow ribbon for the biggest zucchini so at least if he had to lose, he lost to a friend. That takes some of the disappointment away :). He was thrilled to get a silver ribbon on one of his entries though, so now he’s hooked! Hazel took home a couple bronze ribbons herself and she really pushed herself to enter new categories. It was even more fun that her class took a field-trip to the fair and she got to show off all her ribbons to her brand new classmates!

The quilt barn

I come from a long line of great quilters so each year I sneak off to check out the quilt barn. This year Miles towed along (with his hands in his pockets!). We saw a quilt that took three decades and was made by three generations. Since it was hand quilted it got a special ribbon, possibly even cooler than the one for the big zucchini. It also got about four other ribbons, best in show, gold ribbon, blue ribbon and judges choice I think. He was incredibly impressed and decided he needed that hand quilted ribbon for his collection. There is only one way to do that!

Our design

This quilt is something that is going to take quite a few of our hours, it has to be something cool to us. As a 3rd grader, much of his SS curriculum is about the US and geography. We just so happen to have gone on an epic road trip when he was younger and have loads of pictures from that. So, we decided we’ll make a road trip quilt! I ended up finding this US Map quilt pattern off of Etsy and we went to the fabric store to pick our colors.

Being nine, Miles gravitated straight to a bright rainbow of colors. We decided this is probably going to be a baby quilt for his kids because he doesn’t want to commit to something ‘too big’. I think that’s amazing because how many dads make their kids’ baby quilts!? That’s adorable!

The Steps

He pieced the whole thing together himself. He picked which states will be which colors. He arranged it, ironed them on to the background and then I showed him how to use the machine to make the border around each state. He rocked it (but I picked up the border job when he got over it)! After it was outlined, he sewed a little star on each state, in a complimentary color, to signify the capital city (hands on geography!). He was over it at that point so I made the trees for each national park and stitched our route along our roadtrip.

We are kind of making it up as we go along and we couldn’t decide what we wanted on the back. I did a quick google search and found a company that prints custom fabric (littlecocalico). We opened up Gimp (it’s like photoshop, but free) and put together a 24″x24″ set of images from our trip consisting of 144 2×2 inch images. We then just repeated that pattern for our custom fabric. I know less than I should about this so I accidentally ordered a stretchy knit fabric instead of normal backing. It’s harder to quilt but it’s also softer. It’s 100% cotton so my mom assured me it should work ok through the wash and whatnot.

In my search for the custom fabric printer I also found this fabric that has the National Park poster designs. I was kind of obsessed with those on our trip so I thought they would make a pretty good border. They came in all kinds of bright colors, too. There are two repeat posters but otherwise we fit every single national park poster on there, and only two twice, just to make it even! That did leave the corners though, which we didn’t have a great plan for.

We talked about a few options like embroidering a few things but I don’t think I have those kinds of skills to make it look good and Miles was even less confident. Instead, we picked four of our favorite images of our home built camper in those parks and decided to stylize them in bright colors to match his rainbow colors and print another yard of custom fabric. We’re really happy with how the top came together. I wish I had ordered a better backing but you can’t win them all. Besides, Miles said it will be more comfortable that way anyway.

We’re now at the actual quilting stage, putting the top/batting/back together and stitching it everywhere. It’s a slow and tedious process. Not the most fun I have ever had in life but it is a great lesson in finishing projects, developing grit and persisting, generally just ‘getting stuff done’ because that’s a pretty important thing in life! I am glad he will have a ‘thing’ to show for it in the end.

For the quilting

We broke out the quilting racks that my grandpa made for my grandma which I inherited. It was sure fun showing Miles how they work and explaining how and why grandpa built it! It is a fairly rudimentary but extremely functional set up. It’s not made of high quality wood, just some simple 2x’s and plywood scraps. However, thats what I love about them because you don’t need fancy things to do the job right, just use what you have right now! He clearly put a lot of energy and care into building, sanding, staining it and finishing it all off. There is a lot of care in those quilt racks! There are even still the pieces of his old ripped up and repurposed jeans on the frame to safety pin all the slack from the quilt out. I feel like I remember when he saw that problem and came up with that solution for grandma, but I think I was younger than Miles is now when it happened. It’s pretty wild that I get to use those same frames now, and so does my son! It’s a four generation quilt frame!

Here are some pictures of the process and of the quilt so far!