I finally finished my Down the Rabbit Hole Quilt, crossing off my one and only 2021 quilting goal and completing the pattern I started making four years ago.

A quilt label can mean only one thing: I did it! I finished my Down the Rabbit Hole Quilt, Sarah Fielke’s 2017 block of the month program. Yes, I have been working on this quilt for 4 years. It was my one and only goal for 2021. (And, I’m kinda proud that less than halfway through the year and it’s done!) Now, I have finished other quilts since starting this one here, here, and here, because apparently I like a good distraction.

I am so proud of this quilt. For being my first serious endeavor to make a quilt, I’m happy with how it came out. There’s very little that I would change. 

Let me tell you about some of the details. First, I have a notebook that I create little collages in. I just pull pages from magazines and catalogs and when the mood strikes me, I tape them into the notebook trying to follow some sort of theme per page. I used this spread for color inspiration.

I learned so much while making this quilt. I learned needle-turn appliqué, foundation paper piecing, and how to assemble a medallion quilt. I honed my piecing skills. Some of the borders have a lot of little pieces! 

There were some changes to the pattern I made in an attempt to save time. Joke’s on me! And, in no way did my changes make this design better than Sarah Fielke’s original pattern. (Honestly, I prefer hers and the pattern came with 3 different options!) the biggest change I made was to the floral border. The two long sides were supposed to be different than the two short sides. I made all four sides the same. Again, this isn’t a better way to make the original pattern, it’s just what I did.

To finish the quilt, I went back and forth about what to do. At 96” square, there’s no way I could ever had machine quilted it myself. To have it professionally quilted with a longarm machine (huge quilting machine that allows quilters to quilt FAST) would have cost a lot. It would have been worth it, but unfortunately not in my budget. Hand quilting it would have taken a lot of time. And so, I turned to my good old friend tying. I did crisscross ties with tails in the back in most places, but tied with the tails in the front in each flower to create “stamens” of sorts. I also couldn’t resist doing a touch of big stitch quilting in the thin blue borders and around the half Dresden plates. I’m 100% happy with how it turned out.

Finally, sometimes you have to get creative and on the ground. Right now, my sewing machine is on a card table that also holds a bunch of other stuff. In this spot, I didn’t have enough room to stitch the binding on to the front of the quilt. Well, guess what? I just popped my machine onto my bedroom floor, stuck my right leg out so I could push the pedal and tucked my left leg in cross-legged style. I scooched the quilt along the floor as I stitched. Ideal? No. Comfortable? Not at all. Did it get the job done? Absolutely! 

I was so excited about getting this quilt done that I have already popped it in the wash and it’s on my bed. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to taking “good” pictures of it. But, it most definitely is a comfortable quilt to sleep under!

So tell me, what project have you been working on for what feels like forever? Any tips to increase creative productivity when you feel like you can’t get anything done? What questions can I answer for you?