But For Now Let's Get Away on a Roman Holiday

Every Christmas, the Guild participates in a quilt drive with the Salvation Army, where we each pair a small quilt with a teddy bear as a gift for a child in need. By the time the drive rolled around last year, I'd had my machine for eight months, so I figured now was the time to participate.  I'd wanted to learn how to quilt and bind a project anyhow, and the requested quilt size was small enough that I could likely wrangle the top within my little machine.   


As it happened, I got the perfect fabric for this project about two months out from the due date. I'd received a charm pack of Moda's "Roman Holiday" as a door prize, and when I counted, it turned out this pack actually had 45 charms instead of the standard 42.  My mother had suggested a classic disappearing 9-patch, so a pack of 45 meant I could make up 5 sets and have a little wiggle room.

Wiggle room ended up being exactly what I needed. Four of the five sets worked up beautifully, but the fifth was wonky.  I put it aside for another time, which I'll discuss in a later post.

When I actually began the quilting process, I found, like with my little scrappy disaster, that theory and practice aren't the same.  Getting the sandwich together was a learning experience, and the finished result reflected that. There were puckers, stitches that weren't quite straight, and a fair bit of wrestling to get the little monster through my machine.  Thankfully, after the quilting was done, I still had a weekend left to put the binding on.

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The bears were due Monday, December 7th, and I had an extended weekend that began on Friday the 4th.  With the house to myself that Friday morning, I opened Cluck Cluck Sew's machine binding tutorial, put on some music, and got to work.

Now, I'd been battling a cold since the beginning of that week.  However, I was of the mindset that if I got the binding done early (so to speak), I'd have the rest of the weekend to do what I pleased.  As such, I got the binding done in about three hours, although as with the quilting, it was certainly not perfect.

Halsey-Bear preparing for her Roman Holiday

After wrapping Halsey-Bear up in her new blanket, I had a hot bath - and then slept most of the rest of the day. In the end though? It was 100 percent worth it.  Halsey went to a good home, and I could then say I'd completed a project from beginning to end.