A quilt consists of three layers, usually: a backing, a batting, and a top. The top is usually the panel that’s pieced together out of lots of scraps of fabric and pleasantly shaped and shaded into pink hearts, blue moons, yellow stars, green diamonds and… ahem.
Anyway. The overall quilt has to have these three layers stitched together. Sometimes that’s done by hand using a variety of stitches; I gather that these are usually called tied quilts, because their three layers are hand-tied together.
I am machine-stitching my “Sea Creatures” quilt into three layers using my home sewing machine. Sometimes this is done by specialists who have particularly fancy industrial machines called long-arm machines. I don’t have that advantage, especially not on a quilt that I’m making for a Christmas present. I can’t wait for a professional with a long-arm machine to quilt my quilt layers together; I need to finish this quilt tonight or by tomorrow night in order to deliver it properly to its eventual owner.
And so I’m working here in my studio, much later than I usually do, fussing to fuse together three layers of fabric into a quilt. Later tonight I’ll add the edge-binding, and declare it “done” or at least “done enough.”
And so these sorts of things are completed.
