Now that was a journey - not at all like doing his lap quilt. It took about 7 months, 5 of which it was sitting idly while I decided what to do about the less-than-perfect stitching from my not realising that my sewing machine tension actually went higher than 5 (in my defence, the marks between the numbers abruptly stop and the wheel becomes quite stiff to turn. I thought that 5 was all it went up to). After deciding to and then working myself up to unpicking a quarter of the quilting, I plunged into it and managed to finish that and the whole thing quite quickly, well in time for his birthday.I spent so long making the quilt top perfect - the squares were lovely and uniform, pieced in perfect straight lines, the quilt sandwich was lovely and flat and I used tons of pins, but it all turned to custard when quilting. Although it turned out much better with the tension set on 8 (not 5!), I still had troubles with uneven stitches and bunching at the ends of each square - I used a walking foot, but it was a super cheap one from a Chinese Ebay merchant, and to be honest, it didn't really look like it was doing anything, so I'm thinking the quality was a bit shonky, that and my machine is only an entry-level model, not made for such big projects (and is in desperate need of a service). The binding was an interesting affair - I have never bound anything before - I had a very limited amount of fabric left over for it, so the strips were only 2in wide - I would have preferred them to be at least 2.5in, but it worked out anyway. After reading a gazillion posts on binding, I decided to use a cross grain binding and to do the entire thing on the machine - none of this hand stitching for me - I'm far too impatient!
I'm so thankful to the person who advised that I should perhaps start with a single quilt, before throwing myself into a king!
