Ahoy! Finished Pirate Quilt

I’m super excited to finally have this quilt finished and photographed!  I shared an in process photo back in September and then hit a snag.  I had decided to quilt the other in process quilt first, but when I got going I realized I hadn’t pulled the backing fabric tight enough in the pin basting stage. It was puckering quite a bit when I was doing the quilting and I ended up needing to unpick all of the quilting.  I still haven’t finished doing that and it sort of put me off starting the quilting on this one.  After making my three mini quilts I decided to give this one a go.  I was so thrilled with the quilt top and I didn’t want it to go into a black hole of unfinished projects. 

I bought the fabric for this quilt shortly after Andrew was born in the Summer of 2012.  I had fallen in love with this fabric line, Out to Sea by Sarah Jane.  I’ve made soooo many things with it– my Wiksten Tova, an Everyday Skirt, a Washi dress, a Staple Dress, and Sleepover pajamas for my nephew (just to name a few!)  I thought it would be really fun for the boys to have a pirate themed bedroom using this fabric line as much as possible.  It took me quite a while to find the perfect pattern for my precious bundle of fat quarters.  I wanted something that would showcase the fun prints and wouldn’t require me to cut really small pieces.  Sew Mama Sew linked to this quilt tutorial in September and I knew I’d found the the one!

I love that it’s made up of all squares so it didn’t require really fussy cutting.  Assembling the quilt top was quick and easy.  I think the color play of light to dark back to light is so cool.  The only thing that tripped me up a little bit was that I had fat quarters and the quilt designer had used 1/3 yard cuts.  I didn’t realize until I’d started cutting that on some of my fat quarters I couldn’t get the right amount of squares cut without including a bit of selvage or having to piece the square together.  I see now that there is an update to the pattern saying to measure in advance and cut slightly smaller squares if necessary.

I did straight line quilting with my walking foot.  The quilting went pretty quickly once I marked all the lines with tailors chalk.  I also made a scrappy binding using leftovers from each fat quarter.  I hadn’t done a scrappy binding before– I think it looks really good with this quilt top.

I’ve got two more pirate bedroom projects to show you this week.  I also have a few more projects that I’m hoping to get finished before our new baby comes.  Time for the nesting instinct to kick into high gear so I can get everything finished!

~Teri

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