Batik Quilt

Here's a look at the finished batik quilt, plus some photos of the process.

It's driving me crazy, but I don't dare put this quilt on the bed yet. The kittens are still too small to properly manage the leap onto the mattress. They manage to jump about 3/4 of the way up, and then dig their little claws into the bedding to pull themselves up the rest of the way.

Cat claws + new quilt = bad news.

 

 

The first big hurdle was finding the right background color to pair with all the batiks. I started out with a light grey, which didn't work at all. I eventually settled on a dark charcoal grey.

 

 

 

 After piecing the top, the next challenge was quilting. I've been wanting to try free-motion machine quilting for a while, and thought this quilt would be a good place to start.

I rented time on this Gamill sewing machine while on vacation in Maine, and completed the quilting in about six hours.

 

The quilting process was a lot of fun and a little bit nerve-wracking. The machine felt like it was driving me rather than the other way around for the first couple of hours. By the end of the day, I felt like I had the hang of it.  

 

 

Up next was making yards and yards and yards of binding, followed by two days of hand-stitching it on.  

 

Lastly, after a thorough trip through the washer and the dryer, it was done!