Blog 152

As the Gresford Exhibition gets closer, there has been more progress on Ella’s quilt. This is the start of the quilting process.

 

          

                              Multi-coloured thread

 

                  

                                               Walking foot

 

 

               

C                                  entre of the quilt

First, I chose to sew a decorative stitch down each of the bulky seams in order to stabilise the quilt from the centre to the edges.

 

 

      

  

                           Decorative stitches

Then I sewed another decorative stitch around the inner pieced border.  I changed then to a free-motion foot and did continuous leaves with the odd flower/butterfly in the wider outer border. Y ou will notice that I have sewn a line of larger straight stitches around the edge about 1/8” in from the raw  edges. Once I have a quilt at this stage, I feel confident that I can add the binding strip without there being further shifting of the fabrics.

 

 

                                         Border detail

 I decided to use the remainder of the fabric from the back of the quilt for the binding. There was a long 15” strip left over and I wanted to cut it on the bias in order to give the edge of the quilt a ‘candy-stripe’ effect. This meant cutting many short strips and sewing many joins; tedious I know but it was the best possible use of the remaining fabric to produce the desired effect. The best way to achieve this was to straighten the top edge of the fabric and to lay the 45 degree line marked on the ruler along the cut edge.

 

                                                  True bias

 When you cut along the lower edge of the ruler, you have a true bias edge.

 

                                              First cut

 I cut several 1 ¼” strips for a single binding and joined them together with a diagonal seam.

 

                                        Many joins

Once the excess wadding and backing fabric were removed from around the edge, the strip was sewn around with an accurate ¼” seam.

 

                                      Open seam

 

                                Corner fold

 I am now at the stage where I need to do more quilting in the main body of the quilt but at least I know that the tedious work of binding and hand sewing around the outside edge is well in hand. It will be finished on time!