"HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO MAKE THAT QUILT?" BY REBECCA LATHAM

It seems that every time I show a finished quilt to someone, they always ask the same question:" How long did it take you to make that quilt?" My answer is always the same:

"I have no idea. Twenty hours? Forty hours? I don't know."

 

Well, I decided to find out how long it takes to make a quilt. I was contacted through Facebook a couple of weeks ago by a grade school friend, Donna.  She has a friend who is turning fifty soon and wanted me to design and make a lap size quilt (57" x 73") from start to finish for this friend. After looking though lots of quilts on Pinterest, she decided on the colors and design, and I made a mock up of it on my Quilt-Pro software. Here is the concept:

 

And here it is completed:

But I'm getting ahead of myself! I diligently timed every minute that I spent making this quilt, and here are my results, along with a few photos to keep it interesting.

 

To start with, I figured about one hour to design the quilt with my software. I took a lot longer than that, but I was also just fooling around with colors and stuff, so I am only saying one hour. When the fabric from Keepsake Quilting arrived, I dropped everything and started piecing half square triangle blocks.

 

This...

 

 ...turned into this.

And when all the blocks were done, I was left with this on the design wall.

 

Each different color took twenty minutes to finish. And since there were twenty-four colors, this part of the process took eight hours. Then I took them off the design wall to arrange them.

 

The little picture tacked to the design wall is a mock up that I used to arrange the blocks correctly. This part of the process took ninety minutes, but would have taken a lot longer if my wonderful husband, Bill, had not been helping me!

 

In the photo above, the vertical seams have been sewn. Each seam, including removing from the design wall, arranging, sewing, pressing and putting back on the design wall, took twenty minutes. For eleven seams - three hours and forty-five minutes.

 

Sewing the horizontal seams took sixteen minutes for each seam, so that came to four hours of work.  Now it was time to audition border, binding and backing fabric, so I was off to Robert's Sewing Center.

 

The digital quilting design is "Keukenhof" and I purchased it from Urban Elementz. The thread is "Vineyard", a variegated purple, pink, and teal 100% cotton thread by YLI Threads.

 

Shopping for batting, backing, border and binding took two hours, including travel time. Cutting the fabric for the eight border sections, pinning them to the quilt top, sewing them on and pressing them took three and a half hours. Piecing the backing fabric took thirty minutes. 

 

The quilt top was now ready to be loaded onto the frame of my long arm quilting machine. Here are a few photos of the quilting process:

 

Laying out the top, back and batting on the floor to check for size and to place a few safety pins as registration points took fifteen minutes. Loading the quilt components onto the frame and doing the actual quilting took five hours. Trimming the quilt and squaring it up took another fifteen minutes. Cutting, seaming and attaching the French fold binding took two hours. Designing, making and attaching the label took another one hour. And the quilt is finished!  Here are the final photos: 

Packing the quilt for shipping and traveling to and from the post office to send it on its way took one hour. So, how long did it take me to make that quilt?

  Approximately 34 hours!

Now we know! And this was for a lap size quilt, so if you take 34 hours and divide it by the labor I am charging, I am making just under $6 an hour.  Some people may not understand why a handmade quilt is so expensive when they can go to Walmart and get a handmade quilt from China for $59.99.

Most people don't realize that the materials alone for a handmade quilt will cost somewhere between $100 and $200, and maybe even more, and that does not include the labor to make the quilt. When I tell people that, they usually decide to go to Walmart! I can't fault them for that, because I know that handmade quilts are expensive, and some people may not be able to afford one right now. Maybe someday they will, and I will be happy to design and craft one for them!

RAINBOW STARS AND ZIG ZAGS BY REBECCA LATHAM

 FROM CONCEPT

TO COMPLETION

Twelve years ago, back in 2002, I went to a quilt show and bought some fabric. Now, I've bought a lot of fabric, but I usually know what I'm going to make with it and when I'm going to make it. This was the first time I just fell in love with some fabric and bought it on a whim. I guess I've learned my lesson, because I've never done it again! Anyway, here is what I bought way back around the turn of the century:

 

This picture shows four identical bundles of twelve Fossil Fern fabrics in rainbow colors, arranged so that you can see all the colors. I only bought one bundle.

 

 

 

 

I found this Laurel Burch fabric, which is called, "Cats in Jungle". I thought it would work well with the rainbow fabrics, and I was not sure how much to buy, so I bought four yards.

The other fabric I used was Kona White. No picture of that fabric, because, well, it's plain white fabric.

 

 

I always planned to make a kid's quilt out of this collection, and, last week, I pulled the fabric out and started browsing through Pinterest to get ideas. I saw the quilt below, designed by Gerri Robinson, and liked the idea of having rows of different blocks that looked good together, rather than just one block throughout.

 

I think this quilt is rectangular, but I wanted a square quilt. I made a couple of other changes as well, like using different colors for the centers and points of the stars, and using more colors for the stars and chevrons. Where Gerri chose not to have a border on her quilt, I used the Cats in Jungle fabric to make a 3.75" border. I used the same fabric for the binding and the backing, Warm and White 100% cotton batting, and white King Tut 100% Egyptian cotton quilting thread. 

 

 

 

Most of the time, I seem to gravitate to scrappy quilts, ones where I tend to make one block at a time. This time, I was able to do a lot of chain piecing, because many of the blocks were identical. That was fun for a change!

With the piecing done, I started to choose a quilting design from the ones I already own, but the idea I had was for something swirly or loopy, and nothing I had quite fit the bill. I went to Urban Elementz and popped for a new design called "Outside In". It turned out perfect! It was so fun to quilt, especially watching the pattern develop over all the brilliant colors. Here are a few photos of the quilt on the frame of my Tin Lizzie Ansley 26 long arm quilting machine:

 

Now that the binding is done, the quilt is ready to be posted to my Etsy shop. I had so much fun designing and creating this quilt. I would love to keep it for myself, but the quilts around here are starting to pile up, as you can imagine. The joy was in the journey for me, but this fantastic kid quilt's journey will not be over until it finds a loving home! Thanks for visiting today, and I'll leave you with a few photos of the quilt. 

UPDATE: This quilt did not sell on Etsy, and it is now hanging on the wall in my quilting room.