Loving My Wholecloth Quilt

When I first started this project, I thought that microstippling would be a great way to improve my quilting skills, but I didn't think that it was something I would want to use much in future projects. I was surprised to find out during this exercise that I actually do like it. Once I got the speed thing figured out and no longer had to stop for thread breaks it was actually quite a zen activity. This is a sure sign that Leah Day is an excellent teacher.

The first step for finishing this up was to soak the quilt in water and stretch it out to dry. I was really happy to see the blue ink from the water soluble marker (that I forgot to test) come off completely, and the starch stains too. 

This is my setup for drying: one Ikea end table, lots of elastic, some pins and clips. These are the clips that my mom used for attaching our mittens to our sleeves so they didn't get lost. They are absolutely perfect for blocking quilts. Thanks Mom! 

Here are some close-ups where you can see how nice and puffy the design got once it had dried:

(front)

(back)

Here it is finally bound! Don't forget to check out all the other finished quilts at the bottom of this page.

I wanted to sew little dashes inside the lines so that they'd look like roads, a really cool idea from Danielle but my hand quilting was looking too uneven and pulling up filaments of batting for some reason. I am thinking of trying it with yellow thread on the black binding instead. I was all gung ho about attaching the binding and completely forgot to add little triangles on the back for hanging it up. Oops. So my question this week is: What is the best way to make a small quilt into a wall hanging?

Thanks Leah for all your work taking us through this great project! At some point, I would like to make another small urban quilt to match. Design ideas so far include fire hydrants (with ladders, and fire hoses) or traffic lights with crosswalks.