Friday 22 June 2012

Quilt virgin part 2

Right then, so on the first post about my cherry popping quilt experience I left off saying I had to do something with the grain of the fabric...well I couldn't be bothered to work out quite what that meant...it involved weft and weave and something so I figured as its my first go I would be let off by the rather scary quilting people that live in the world wide web.

I made a 5" square template and taking a row at a time placed the card in the middle of each square and drew round it (much like a 4 year old would i.e messily and not straight thus rendering the template pointless) with dressmakers' chalk.


Then I pinned the squares together as a row and sewed them together - making sure there was 1/4"  seam.


Do this for all 9 rows until you are very bored. Then sew each row together using the bottom and top chalk line as the guide. I didn't take a photo of this bit as I was obviously in the zone and in my true slap dash style the first few rows don't quite match up so take a minute to make sure all the seams are in a line while you pin them.

I then added a top panel of gingham fabric at the top of the squares

I kind of lost momentum at this point as I knew I needed a length of fabric for the back and make a tricky binding round the sides and order the wadding that goes inside. I tried to find a brightly coloured sheet cheap but they were all too much. I have an old flannel sheet that was my mum's and its probably older than me so I was going to use that until I found the Ikea gingham duvet cover. I ordered the wadding from ebay - polyester as the bamboo type that the posh quilters recommend was too pricey. I decided to not bother with the binding as I thought I would just make the back panel larger and fold it over to frame the top panel. So cut the wadding larger (about 2" if you like) and the back panel larger still (enough to have a little seam to tuck under) than the top panel.

Fold the back panel over, fold over a hem and pin through the layers (I found it helpful to safety pin the layers together first to stop it moving about too much). Sew round the hems. If I make another, I would also sew round the top of the binding/frame just to make it even stronger.


Now comes the fun bit - the actual quilting. I decided to do crosses diagonally on each square. I started off going right across but when I turned it over it had all rucked up so I had to mind numbingly unpick the length of stitching and do each individual square until I got bored and went diagonally across again!

and here it is...

I am pleased with it as I really did my best to do everything straight and neat so it would last but I'm worried once its washed a few times it may start coming apart. Therefore I will not wash it!

It cost under £20 to make. These cost about £60 made by a profession/from a shop so its worth a try. I am collecting fabric for one for my bed but The Boy has requested one so I'll carry on small.

If you have any quilting tips please share!

Happy Friday

XXXX

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