Bali Buddy Quilt

One evening at our quilting retreat our hostess, Lynndi, gave us all party favors. Mine included a pack of pre-cut 2.5 inch strips of fabric known as a Bali Pop. It just so happened that the quilt on our bedroom wall, which I loved, used a pattern that Lynndi designed specifically to work with Bali Pops. So I bought that pattern and made it up when I got home.

Here is the finished quilt being modeled by The Man.

This was my first rodeo with pre-cut quilting fabrics. It sure did save a lot of cutting, but the pre-cuts don't give you any fudge factor. Lynndi's pattern tells you to sew together your strip sets with a scant quarter inch seam. On account of those strips are 2.5 inches wide and no more, so if you sew at a quarter of an inch (or possibly a hair more) your finished blocks will not be quite the 8.5 inches called for by the pattern. Ask me how I know.

But, luckily, I could fiddle with my problems within the seam allowances, so all was well.

Here's a shot of the back of the quilt. I generally piece my quilt backs because I'm too cheap to buy yardage just for that purpose. Plus, I like to use those pretty remnants when I can.

I even tried two of the techniques I learned at our retreat. For one, I applied the binding by machine.

To do this, you attach the binding to the back and wrap to the front to finish, so that you can carefully machine stitch where it will show the most. I used one of the decorative stitches on my machine to finish off the binding, so it took almost as long as it would have to finish by hand the regular way.

I think in future I'll do the hand stitching for the binding. It looks neater.  But I was in a hurry to finish this quilt up because I want to pop it into the mail to send as a gift to a cousin. Plus it was about 90 degrees yesterday evening so the idea of sitting on the couch with a quilt on my lap while I plyed my needle was not enticing.

I also did a free motion vine around the border. Here's a picture of the free motion vine from the back, where you can see the stitching better. Which isn't necessarily a good thing because it came out a bit hinky. But from the front, with matching thread, it doesn't look too bad and it was kind of fun to do.

And here's a shot of the pattern. It was fun to put together and I finished the whole shebang in about a week of sporadic effort.

You can find your very own copy of the pattern from Lynndi@thumbuddy-special.com.

I hope to cough up one more quilt this month. We have family visiting from Chicago and I really want to ditch the worn out duvet in our guest room and replace it with a quilt by the time they arrive, which will be early July.

Then it will be back to garment sewing for me!