Presenting my final finish of 2019: Interwoven! This is the seventh quilt I completed in 2019.

The pattern is from Lo and Behold Stitchery. I used Kona cotton solids for the top, backing, and binding. It was pieced and quilted with Aurifil 50-weight cotton thread and it’s filled with Warm & Natural cotton batting.* I used Gutermann silk thread to turn the binding.

I completed the top back in March 2019 during the Interwoven Quilt-Along, but I didn’t get it quilted and bound until the very end of the year. I put the final stitch in the binding on December 30.

After the top was done, I left it on my design wall for months because I love looking at it (and I wanted to keep it wrinkle-free). Every time I looked at it I wondered how on earth to quilt it. Inspiration finally hit in early December, as I was leafing through my copy of Walk by Jacquie Gering. I chose the wavy crosshatch pattern and used the walking foot on my Juki TL2010-Q to complete it. I love how the wavy line softens the underlying 2″ grid.

Making this quilt taught me a lot about precise 1/4″ seams. One thing that has stuck with me is how important preparing and cutting the fabric is. I starched the white fabric differently from the colors, and I used a different ruler to cut the white strips and the colored strips. Both of those choices had a negative impact on getting precise seams, long before I got anywhere near the sewing machine.

I also learned that the “victory lap” was a great idea. When I finished piecing the quilt and before I trimmed off the excess halves of each edge block, I marked where the finished edge of the quilt would be, and stitched 1/8″ inside that line. This kept the seams from coming apart and stabilized the outside edge of the quilt. It made the quilting process enormously easier.

I am really pleased with how well it came out, especially considering the number of pieces I had to take apart and remake when they weren’t the right measurement.

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*It should have been Warm & White, but a measure-twice-cut-once-get-it-wrong-anyway situation occurred, and the only batting I had on hand that was large enough was Warm & Natural. The whites in the quilt would be slightly brighter over Warm & White, but I don’t mind.