First of all I want to thank all of you for allowing me to take however long I needed to finish this project. I certainly never want to bow out of my obligations…but this was just not going to happen when it was supposed to….but I did want to finish this quilt because it is so awesome!!!
My last post was on cutting and sorting….Click Here to view that previous post. 
Now before I start stitching I clean, oil and load a new needle in my machine,
as well as load a bunch of bobbins…Now lets talk a bit about thread choice… Only a few things REALLY bother me…and one of them is too LIGHT of thread used to piece with…I think it is nasty to see those little light stitches holding your patches together….Always use a darker thread…and lower your stitch length. You should not see your stitching in your patchwork…it should be invisible…I stitch just a bit under the 2 setting. I am using black thread to stitch this quilt…and if you are using scrappy fabrics with light and darks use a darker tan or my favorite Aurifil 1040 which is like a mocha brown…
Layout your cut patches and stitch in sections…this block is really a nine-patch…
If you noticed I scrapped up my chains and left my backgrounds the same for each block…
Do you notice how I pin my patches? I stick the pin in from the left side pointing in toward my seam but I keep the point right at about the 1/4″ seam line….this allows me to stitch without having to remove the pin…you do not want to hit pins while stitching…especially if you are sewing with your JUKI and hit them while you are stitching at warp speed…You can/could throw off the timing of your machine…
Chain piece when you can…as well as chain press…this is continuing to press one piece right after the other, staggering them just a bit…(no pic 🙁 )
Pressing…I press my seams open a lot, but I did not press anything open except those last two seam when putting the rows together…These seams nicely nested with each other…it was a joy to stitch…not a lot of pinning…
I just loved making block after block of this quilt…it was fun seeing how different they all looked after they were stitched…
Now after spending a lot of time with these blocks it was obvious to me that I needed something to settle them down a bit…I am talking about sashing…the directions call for scrappy sashing….and well like I said I needed something to calm these blocks down a bit and make them work all together and to accomplish that it just needed a simple solid black sashing! It would have been distracting, no place for your eyes to rest, if I used all the prints so I am so happy how the solid looks…
For the cornerstones I decided to put a little gold in the center to repeat my gold in the center of the blocks…
Stitching and pressing the sashing…
When I was all done….I then made another decision…I wanted this quilt to be big! I want it on my bed…king size….so I added 10 1/2″ borders of a new print from my next line of fabric…I had just enough as you know this fabric is not on the bolt yet…It was so close…that it was meant to be!!!
Now look what that border did!!! It added a lot more interest with the sashing separating all the blocks and then from the border and now I have a huge quilt for my bed! I will show you a picture after it has been quilted but I know a few of you are asking about this black quilt and wanted to know how it turned out…
While I was piecing this quilt it’s name came to me…Stairway to Heaven…
all for now…LB
I know some of you asked if I was going to kit this quilt…the answer is I can’t…I made if from my fabric collection…but we could pull together fabrics from our reproduction fabrics at the shop….just let us know.
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