A Nice Warm Blankie on Election Night

It’s Election Night and I finally finished the Baby Brit Quilt-Along I started back in August. I posted here under the title a Little Quilting Help From Friends. Ah, what a carefree time that was! I met with Ann and Anna for lunch, and heard from Ann all about her new quilting adventures. And I heard from Anna about her life and times.

Ann, Anna and Me

I am so sorry to say that Anna got killed in a motorcycle accident just a couple of weeks after this happy-go-lucky photo was taken of us by the waiter at The Braised Onion.

I mentioned in the post that I’d begun a quilt-along and had been shopping in my fabric stash for suitable remnants to go into the project. This is how it finally turned out.

Little Baby Brit, a bound and ready comforter

My note of identification on the back

At the time, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was the big thing of wonder in the world. Somewhere back in my ancestry, I have a connection to Great Britain, but it’s great to be an American.

Thank you again, Cynthia Horst, for the inspiration and the great tutorials that helped me through it! I feel a sense of accomplishment, although we went through a lot of turmoil to get here and there’s likely to be more changes and cloudy days ahead. Cynthia had to interrupt the scheduled segments of the quilt-along to rush to help her daughter and premature grandbaby, whose schedule to enter this earth life did not correspond with everyone else’s! But now we have a little comforter to cheer and keep us warm this winter, and a few months ago it was all just a dream.

I used Warm and Natural needled cotton batting. I didn’t have a single piece big enough for this larger-than-a-baby-quilt-size, so I pieced together some remnants; you know me! And for the border strips and cross-strips, I did a sampler using some of the omnimotion, heirloom and quilting stitches programmed into my sewing machine. The quilting stitches worked out best; the ominimotion stitches were complex and used a great huge amount of thread.

Sampler stitches on the cross-strips

I mostly used lusciousKing Tut thread (first time I’ve tried it) until the 500 yard spool I had ran out, then I had to resort to Joann’s Coats and Clark’s brand machine quilting thread. Not highly recommended, as the thread shredded several times before I was finally through, even though I was using a topstitch needle with a big eye.

Coats and Clark’s thread shred

I did a free-motion stipple stitch around the border pieces. I used Karen Grof’s method for binding that I learned from her class at the Quilt Expo and I was pretty happy with that.

Squaring up the corners and borders

Snuggling in to watch election results

I guess I am a blanket sort of a person. I make baby blankets, I make fleece blankets for bigger kids, and now I make quilts. And, like a proper old hippie, I think of the appropriate rock ‘n roll tune while I work, and right now it’s Bruce Springsteen’s “Cover Me.”

We will wake up in the morning, and no matter who wins the election, half the people in the US won’t be happy. But when the cold night looms dark and threatening, some of us will have a nice warm blankie.