Handmade Holidays: Quilted Challah Cover

As soon as I saw the challah cover tutorial on Sew, Mama, Sew! back in August, I knew I wanted to make it for a friend for Chrismukkah. (I'm highly amused that there's an O.C. wiki, although I don't know why I'm surprised.)  Of course, good intentions of having it done in time for Chanukah rarely work out unless you actually start the project ahead of time.  So it got there on Christmas Eve, I think, cementing the whole Chrismukkah thing.

I used orange, because it's one of my friend's favorite colors, and paired it with one of my favorite shades of blue.  The paper piecing practice I'd just done really came in handy. The whole thing went surprisingly well, especially considering I'd never machine quilted and bound anything before.  I made my first three nieces and nephews each a baby quilt when I was in high school and college, but they were all sewn pillowcase-style and tied instead of quilted. 

I was excessively worried that I'd screw up the letters for "Shabbat" and somehow write something offensive instead -- kind of like those stories you hear about tattoos in Chinese that don't say what the person thought. (Full disclosure: I have a Kanji tattoo that means laugh.  I verified it from many, many sources before getting it done!)  So I checked the tutorial about a billion times, and also Googled it just to make sure it was correct. 

I used this no pins, no hand-sewing tutorial for the binding, which was right up my alley.  Two of my least favorite things eliminated!  I used 2.5" strips, but wish I'd risked it and gone with the 2.25" binding instead.  As you can see, I wasn't very close to the edge on the back.

I decided to just go with wavy lines for the quilting, since it was the least likely to make me crazy with my anal tendencies.  I also don't have a quilting or darning foot, so I couldn't try free-motion quilting.  This worked well with my walking foot, and I like how it turned out.  It's a little stiff even though I washed it after I was done, so I'm hoping it'll loosen up with use.

 

I *think* I may have the guts to try an actual quilt one of these days now.