A Quilt For Granddaughter 2

 It's been almost three years since I finished the quilt for Granddaughter 1, so I thought it was time to get one going for GD 2.  The girls currently share a bedroom and there's a good chance 2 of the 3 girls always will, so I thought it would make sense to use the same Irish Chain pattern and coordinating colours so that they will go together without being identical.  GD1's main colour was purple (#4 in the above pic), and I'm going with pink (#7) for GD2 and I'll use blue for GD3 when I finally get around to hers.  You may recognize fabrics #1, #2, and #3 from the first quilt, and #6 is very close to a previous fabric.  I really like the idea of using some of the same fabrics as it shows continuity between the quilts.  I'm not sure I will be able to do that with the third one but I will jump off that bridge when I get there.

I'm pleased with how my points line up

The quilt top assembled

Quilt sandwiched and pinned

I've never really kept track of the time I put into my quilts, although I'm pretty sure the garden quilt took me between 40-48 hours.  I'm going to try and keep a running total here for this one.  This doesn't include planning (omg SO many hours on planning!) or shopping (road trips to London? lol) or washing fabric.  I always feel like it takes me much longer to do things than it should, mainly because I fuss over every little detail.  I watch videos on Youtube and they quickly place their ruler and slice the fabric, run the pieces through the sewing machine at full speed and then give them a very quick press.  I agonize over making sure the ruler is lined up perfectly before cutting the fabric, I run it through the sewing machine at maybe half speed to ensure "perfect" 1/4" seams (they are never perfect) and then spend a LOT of time pressing as I go.  I don't just do a quick once-over like they do on the videos but take the time to really press the heck out of the seams. It's a good thing I have a tv in the sewing room to binge on "The Crown" while sewing!  I don't think I will embroider on this one, although that may change as I get closer to a finished quilt.  The theme of the first one was embroidered butterflies, so maybe I will use my dragonfly stencil to free motion over the larger squares on this one in lieu of embroidery.  Ok here we go:

3.5 hours    Cutting and sorting strips

12 hours    Joining and re-cutting strips, sewing blocks

15 minutes    Pressing and starching finished blocks

45 minutes    Squaring up blocks

6 hours    Assembling quilt top

2 hours    Joining the backing; sandwiching and pinning the quilt (note: much quicker since using spray basting)

5 hours    Marking and quilting the main diagonal lines

7 hours     Marking and quilting the free motion dragonflies and the short diagonal lines

1 hour    Cutting and joining the binding strips; sewing them to the quilt

4 hours    Hand sewing the binding down

1 hour    Embroidering the label and sewing it to the quilt

Then washing the quilt to remove layout lines (just found a "quick wash" setting on the washing machine - yay!)

Total:  42.5 hours

This makes sense as I've roughly estimated between 40 and 48 hours per quilt for the previous quilts I've done.  That doesn't include the time embroidering on those quilts where I've done that (Butterfly Kisses, Algonquin), or as mentioned above the other non-sewing aspects of quilt making.