Lemongrass Quilt

I started this quilt at the end of January, to kick off my baby crafting for "la quetsch" (gender unknown, due 3/24). It's the Lemongrass Quilt by Laura Ducommun from the book Quilts, Baby! Here's her version: The inspiration for the colorway came from some Ikea fabric (Barnslig) that I bought in December: raspberry, lime, orange, and a slate-ish blue. These fabrics (Anna Maria Horner, Westminster/Rowan, Joel Dewberry, etc.) came from my LQS in Wellesley. The palette is quite a bit brighter than Ducommun's version, and avoids the large chunks of white which seemed unwise for a baby quilt.

One part of the quilt that I found challenging was cutting my perfect rectangles into random trapezoids (see below for after & before shot). This required wasting a lot of fabric and letting go of my usual tendency to set everything at right angles. Clearly the left side is more interesting, but I found it hard to do.

Initially, the directions are easy to follow and well-illustrated. My only complaint there is that the amount of fabric she calls for to make the orange rectangles (1 1/2 yards) is more than twice what I actually used (5/8 yards) - an unfortunate waste. I plan to use the remains for the binding, since the raspberry and blue are almost gone (she should call for more of these if she expects readers to make the binding from them, as she does).

As I continued to piece the blocks, however, I ran into serious trouble. Turns out that Ducommun's directions about the maximum size for orange rectangles can, once you've added even the skinniest permissible borders, leave you with blocks that are far bigger than the 11 x 14" finished size. I blindly followed her initial measurements (isn't that the point of buying a pattern with directions!?) and ended up in a quandary. Not being the start-over-to-do-it-right type, I settled for some borderless blocks (i.e. no lime on the outside) and one pathetic pentagon. Having to cut down my original blocks and retrofit them made piecing the front very time-consuming. For some reason, I had a really hard time planning how to size the lime strips to get my off-kilter blocks back into rectangles - something weak in my brain there. As a result, I had add little scraps of lime here and there to get everything to the right size. Oh, and another bonus - the amount of lime fabric she calls for is insufficient, so I bought another 1/4 yard. Here's where I ended up once I'd finagled everything I could:

Then I pieced the blocks together, made my sandwich with batting and backing, and spent two long nights watching the Olympics and basting the whole quilt in a spiral shape:

The next adventure was a really neat one: I tried free motion quilting for the first time! It took me some time to read all the good internet tutorials on the subject, buy the right canary yellow thread (not what I expected would match the lime sashing, but there you go), and figure out how to lower the feed dogs on my old Bernina. Then I dug out the table attachment, turned down my stitch length to 0, and started to sew concentric circles all over the quilt. I have terrible right/left coordination (can't rub my belly and pat my head simultaneously), so moving the quilt manually while using the right speed with the foot pedal was a huge challenge and yielded wildly varying stitch lengths. Other challenges included: the weight of the quilt pulling it off course and getting little jags in my lines every time I paused. Even being on vacation and home alone, it took me three days to get through this process.

I found that thread basting was a bad combination for this kind of machine quilting, because the loose basting stitches caught in the presser foot and had to be cut loose all the time. After much clipping of threads and removing of basting, I was done:


Then I used the detailed directions from Last-Minute Patchwork Gifts to do a hand-stitched double binding made from randomly pieced lengths of the leftover orange and raspberry fabrics, and gave it a wash in the machine to get some good crinkling action:

Notes for future iterations of this quilt:

1. Only buy 5/8 yard of fabric for block centers (not 1 1/2 yards), unless you want to bind in the same fabric. Buy 1 3/4 yards for sashing (not 1 1/2 yards).

2. Cut center rectangles smaller than directed so that there's room to fit in two more borders of at least 1 1/4" each. Final block must measure 11 x 14".

3. Rather than basting the quilt, place safety pins at the corner of each block. Buy special quilting safety pins that have a curve to them.