Blog 531
All this week my focus has been to make progress with the
individual strips of the scrap quilt which I have decided to call ‘Set Square’.
I have been in the zone this week because of the weather and I have persevered
until all the long individual panels are now being layered up and pinned onto
wadding and the backing fabric that I have created. I can’t remember the last
time that I worked so efficiently and with so much focus; I enjoyed it! It was
also extremely pleasing to have used a lot of my remaining cotton fabrics to
create the backing strips for this quilt. Yes it would have been much quicker to
have bought fabric but not quite so smugly pleasing as seeing my stash being
reduced!
After sewing all the individual strips to each other, I relocated to the warmth of the lounge to cut off the joining threads and reduce the fabric on the corners. Then I had a brain wave when I decided to wrap the strips onto wide pieces of cardboard to keep them tidy and flat. I labelled them on their width and it is good to know that any remaining strips will be easily stored for future use.
Sewing
I decided as I went along that I would tidy up my fabric
drawers bit by bit and that was when I found a tray of fabrics that I had not
used! Mind you, these were tone on tone fabrics which, on reflection, might not
have been suitable so I don’t feel quite as grumpy about it now!! But it
probably means I have to make a final scrap quilt now to get rid of them. For a
long while now I have been trying to reduce my considerable stash so that I can
just concentrate on painterly fabrics like Batiks and Bali’s. The Liberty
fabrics have been used up; the silks have been sewn into a quilt and most of my
scrap fabrics are now part of many quilts and wall hangings!! Sometimes I
wonder why I am still making large pieces of work like quilts and throws but I
suppose it is a reflection of the raw materials that I have to hand and the
compulsion to use them to show that the money to buy them wasn’t wasted!
To create the backing strips I decided to sew them straight
onto the wadding using a walking foot and a ‘sew and flip’ method. To cope with the bulk I rolled the wadding so
it would fit under the arm of the machine and I worked with multiple strips so
that I made progress along each one at the same time. I finger-pressed each
strip after flipping it and only ironed the whole strip on completion.
I am at the stage where I am layering up the strips now ready
for free motion quilting which should happen this coming week. I am delighted
to have made so much progress on a piece of work which has been folded and
ignored on top of a cupboard for many a month!!
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