Sunday, 31 July 2016

BLOG 310

BLOG 310

 

I have made some good progress on the baby’s floor quilt. I satin stitched around the applique shapes through the batting layer only and used black thread for eyes, noses, tails etc. Then I added the third layer, the backing fabric, to free motion quilt the background and I used a decorative stitch on my machine to add interest to the narrow bright strips surrounding the block.

           
                  Applique and quilting

            Detail

                  Stitched features

Then I started to join them together. I placed the top strips RS together onto one of the batting and backing layers; the other I folded back out of the way.

                  RS together

When I had sewn the seam, I placed the blocks RS down on a flat surface. The other edge is still folded back at this stage.

                    Sewn seam

I then brought the batting only back from the folded side to cover the sewn seam. I wanted the batting edges to be butted up to one another so the free batting needed to be trimmed. By folding it back where it touched the sewn seam, I was able to trim with my scissors held flat as you see them below. The edges of the batting were then over sewn to hold them together.

                  Trimming

                 Over sewn

 Finally, on the back of the quilt, the edges of unsewn backing fabric was turned under and pinned for hand sewing.

                 Pinned edge

And then, after all the effort, I turned it onto the front of the quilt ….. and I didn’t like what I saw! The border fabric was too busy to be clumped together and needed to be separated with a joining strip. So it was back to square one! I did some reverse sewing, re-joined the blocks using a 1” strip in the front and 1 ½” on the back, and I was better pleased!

 
                       Not happy

                 Joining strip front

                Joining strip back

After binding, it was signed and it is ready for the lucky recipients who don’t yet know it is coming their way!

                Floor quilt

                   Signature

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