Finally finished: Cathedral Windows Quilt

Guess what I finally finished? My super colourful cathedral windows quilt!

Cathedral7

These cathedral windows came away to the snow with us this year (where I finished it). They came away with us to the snow last year. This bloody thing came away with me to my sister’s house when she used to live in the US. It’s taken me over 18 months to finish this %$*@$ thing.

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I like it. I don’t love it. Hopefully the love will return as my memory of it’s construction continues to fade. A bit like childbirth.

Hand sewing those flaps back was not for me. It became even more difficult when I stumbled across this awesome tutorial on the Moda Bake Shop on machine-sewing Cathedral Windows. If I’d found this before I’d started, I thought, I’d be done by now. So demoralising.

But I’d already past that point. The point where you’ve done so much work that even though you want to give it up, you can’t. Too much energy invested so an end product must be achieved. Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn.

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I’m not crazy about how my flower centres look, due in part to my hand sewing and in part to the underlying coloured corners meeting here.

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By choosing to have a different colour in each petal (rather than the same for all four as in the Moda Bake Shop example) I created a bit of a nightmare where the points met. Ah well, I still had to give it a go.

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I started out with Anna Maria Horner’s Good Folks line:

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Somehow managed to fuse it to my ironing board (good excuse to buy a new cover):

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Finally fused the colours down where they were supposed to go:

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Then trimmed my squares for the top windows (slightly concave on each edge for less bulk):

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Test drove my colours for the top windows:

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Then decided to hand sew. Sob.

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I just couldn’t get into it. Didn’t enjoy doing it. It annoyed me that my points didn’t meet exactly.

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Never mind, this cathedral windows quilt is finished now and looks good when viewed as a whole. I don’t do myself any favours picking it to pieces with a zoom lens.

Now, what to do with it? It won’t last as a pillow, at least not in my house. I think I might hang it on the wall, what do you think?

Cathedral7
(I am so glad it’s over)


ETA: It’s only 16 by 16 inches (40 x 40 cms).

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