Finished Pointy Quilt

I finished my Pointy quilt last Friday! From start to finish, it took about 2 weeks which is pretty darn fast in my world these days — but it turns out when I make a single project my priority, it gets done!

(Reminder: This is a pattern by Elizabeth Hartman that I was testing. It will be available for sale from her site sometime soon.)

I went with an improvised zig zag pattern for the quilting by starting with one zig zag across the middle and roughly echoing that same line in either direction. I’d never tried anything like this before (all my previous quilting has been straight lines along the lines of the piecing) and I was reasonably happy with the result. There’s always a part of me that hates quilting — I spend so much time on piecing and then “mess up” that nice, clean look with quilting — but obviously it’s a necessity. I mean, can you call it a QUILT if it’s not QUILTED?

I put together a scrappy binding using strips of all the different colored fabrics featured in the arrows and on the back. This is one thing I had planned from the very beginning — I knew I wanted a scrappy, colorful binding all along!

Here are some more photos:

As a final note, I didn’t prewash my fabrics and I didn’t preshrink the batting. In the past, I’ve always prewashed and preshrunk but I’ve seen other people who don’t, and I decided to try it out myself. The result? I’m on the fence.

I don’t think my lack of prewashing made a difference at all — fabrics these days tend to be colorfast from the start. In the future, I probably won’t prewash.

But I do think I prefer preshrinking the batting. After washing and drying this quilt, it’s definiltely more “wrinkly” and comfy-looking — which I like. But if you look closely at the photo below, you might notice how the stitch lines are a little wobbly.

To be honest, I’m not 100% sure that’s due to the batting shrinking; it could be due to poor sewing technique on my part…but I don’t remember it looking like that before I washed it. Is it a huge deal? Not really, and most people probably wouldn’t notice it. But it does make me want to revert to preshrinking my batting next time around.

All in all, this was a really fun quilt to make! I have a few minor suggestions that I plan to send Elizabeth for her to consider (along with input from other testers) before she releases the pattern, but overall, it was really easy to follow. If you like it, you should definitely consider buying the pattern and making your own!