Broken Herringbone Finished At Last!

I started this quilt in August of 2013.  I never dreamed that it would take me a whole 14 months to finish this, after all Molly Sparkles had this as a 12 week QAL.  I kept up with the QAL for about 9 weeks and then put the project aside for 9 months!  I do not want my quilts to turn out like all my scrapbooks!!!

I have posted before about the baptist fan and quilting it.  Honestly I do t know that I will ever quilt this pattern again.  It's beautiful but takes a long time to mark and quilt.  Great to have done but not good enough to entice me to do it again.  

I'm sorry that you can see the markings on the quilt still, My last step is washing off all the markings.  I do love this quilt and am going to put it on my guest bedroom bed.

The fabric is a Robert Kaufmann jelly roll and a Kona cotton grey.  The back really does match the front even though my nighttime lights are crazy wierd tonight.

I have linked up to:  Freshly Pieced // MyQuiltInfatuation  // Quilt Story // Free Motion By The River // Blossom Heart Quilts // Sew Fresh Quilts

Baptist Fan

I'm working on a broken herringbone quilt that I started 13 months ago, with Molli Sparkles in a QAL.  Of coarse I set my vision to big and eventually decided to put the quilt on hold and just made this Christmas table runner.

Well, 13 months after starting this broken herringbone quilt,  I have finally finished the quilt top and am ready to put this quilt together.  

I have decided for this quilt I want to quilt a baptist fan pattern but I have never done this.  I know I'm a little crazy to quilt a pattern like this on a home machine, a 72"x85" quilt, and never having tried the pattern before.  

My first issue is I  don't have a circular template to create the fan.  I looked at my local quilting store and they have 1" half circle patterns.    I really want the fans to be farther apart than 1" but not so far as 2", meaning they won't work.  Many tutorials out there show how you can freehand your circle, but that does not work for me!  Other blogs show how some used lids or other circular shapes.... Not what I want.

I decided to create a template for me.  After digging around in my untouched scrapbooking closet I found some thin plastic and a hole punch.  

At first I thought I would want my fans quilting with circles 1 1/2" apart so I marked and punched my template ever 1 1/2".

After drawing the circles and seeing how far apart they looked, I re-marked (notice the black dots) my template at every 1 1/4".

Here is my sample drawings to see how big my fans will be.

Before I quilt anything I have to draw it!  If I can draw something on paper I can learn to quilt it on fabric,  if I can't draw on paper then I'm crazy to think I can make it quilt perfectly on fabric. It's not perfect, but it works and I found how I wanted my baptist fans quilted.  I will be quilting from right to left so I drew my fans from left to right.  Make sure you know the direction you will be quilting before you draw fans on your quilt!  

Next I practiced quilting on scrap fabric, but you aren't going to see how that turned out ;).

Next I marked my quilt's lower half and started quilting it using Arofill, 50wt light grey thread.

Here is where I am to.