Love from Margaritaville: A Friday Finish

I have to admit that this was not a quilt I ever thought I would be making.  A memory quilt to begin with.  A memory quilt  made of Hawaiin shirts, pajama pants and fish prints using a proper quilt pattern most of all LOL.  But it has grown on me and at the end of the day I love it.  Which makes sense given that I end up falling in love with every quilt I finish!

I used the Crooked Cabins pattern by Kati at From The Blue Chair.  The pattern was wonderful to follow and the only issues I faced occurred when I added squares without doing proper math!

Jenny's Dad was a huge tie dye fan so there is lots of that in this quilt.  Including his initials in one of the lower corners.  Sadly, her dog passed away while I was making the quilt.  The heart is from her sweater.

I used a medium weight woven fusible interfacing on all of the fabric.  Doing that definitely added a large chunk of time to the process but I had zero issues sewing with all of the different fabrics.  There is everything from t-shirts, to hawaiian shirts to rugby shirts and pj pants in this quilt.  The interfacing also added a bit of weight to the quilt which I think makes it super cozy.  I also pressed all of my block seams open to cut down on bulk and pressed toward the sashing whenever possible.

As soon as I heard there were lots of Hawaiian shirts involved, I started thinking of the floral print from Glimma for the backing.  When we couldn't find any tie dye this was the clear winner.  It's bound in the coordinating stripe.  I'm pretty sure this is my first striped binding but I guarantee it won't be my last!

For the quilting I knew I didn't want to interfere with the fabrics so I stitched in the ditch around all of the squares.  Then I quilted organic lines (AKA not even or straight!) in all of the sashing.  Areas to the left and right have vertical lines.  Areas to the top and bottom have horizontal lines.  And setting triangles have diagonal lines. 

Not gonna lie, the quilting was a bear.  I used my walking foot which meant I had to manipulate a 72" square quilt through the throat of my machine many, many times.  My shoulders ached a lot but it was totally worth it.  The texture is amazing and as a bonus side effect, the Kona Snow I used for sashing became really soft after 5 hours of quilting.  I'm not sure if it was from the softener on the clothes of being handled frequently but it's awesome nonetheless.

Linking up with Amanda Jean.