And....We...Did it!!!!!!
We finally, after 8 long months, have finished our Legend of Zelda quilt top. We have it sent off to the quilter now with a heartfelt plea, begging her to take good care of it and work her magical quilting skills. It was hard to turn it over to someone else to finish it off, but I have been assured we deposited it in good hands. The lady who is quilting it was pretty impressed with what we've done. She has never seen a quilt like it before.
So, I wanted to share some final thoughts on this project:
1- Linda's pattern is awesome! I would have paid money for it if she didn't offer it free. Her instructions were very clear and easy to follow and it all came together so well.
2- Don't be afraid to use some fun fabric and change up the colors. We love the subtle patterns and vibrant colors of the fabric we used!
3-Use gray thread! Linda suggests using white thread so it doesn't shadow through on the white parts, but there are far more black parts to this quilt than white. I used white thread at first and there are some places where the white shows through on the black. Once I switched to gray it worked great everywhere.
4-Don't skip the first step of making the ironing grid to lay the pieces out on! That part is super time consuming, but worth it. It doesn't have to be expensive though. I think I mentioned in a previous post that I used duck cloth (that I got for cheap out of a remnant bin) on top of my card table, and it worked great! The only burn mark we got on the card table was when someone plugged in the iron and left it laying on the fabric. We have a nice iron burn mark on the card table now for some happy memories.
5-If you are curious about the final cost of this project (that's always something I like to know) I will try to break it down for you, although I didn't keep as good of track as I wish I would have.
I bought a bolt of 20 yards of interfacing from walmart.com. That was about $20
The June Tailor slotted ruler (almost a necessity for this project) was gifted to me by my friend, but goes for $30-$50.
2 yards of the green I used $10 (it was $5 a yard at Walmart. Walmart is all we've got in my small town! :(
1 yard red fabric $5
Some fat quarters for other colors, about $10
The rest of the fabric for my front was either from my stash or gifted to me, but if I had to have bought it it would have been probably another $40-50 (also included in this would be the cost of needles, thread, and a new blade for my rotary cutter).
The fabric for the back was about $50 with a coupon from Joann's
Cost of getting it quilted by someone with a long arm will be about $65 (but could be much higher if I wanted cotton batting or a specific design. As it is I chose polyester batting and asked her to just do random swirls)
I will make my own binding using fabric from my stash.
Total cost=
$20+$50+$10+$5+$10+$40+$50+$65=$250
So the cost will be pretty variable depending on what you already have. I think it's important for people to realize how costly making a quilt like this can be though! It's not cheap for sure.
And I think that's all folks! This has been a super fun project. I can't wait to see how it turns out after being quilted and bound.
