Sunday, October 24, 2010

Binding Join Tutorial, As Promised

A blog post or two back, I expressed how pleased I was with my technique for joining the beginning and end of the binding strips when attaching them to the quilt, and because kara hates that part, I promised I would take pictures the next time I attached a binding strip to create a tutorial for my technique.  Plus, I can bookmark this blog post in my browser for next time so I don't have to twist my brain into knots trying to figure out which way to lay the fabric, etc...  So here it is.  These instructions assume that you have started sewing the binding strip in the middle of one side rather than at a corner and that the first 8 to 12" and last 8 to 12" of binding strip have not been stitched down (but these instructions are ubiquitous).

1. Fold back the end of the beginning of the binding strip to a 45 ° angle and press to create a seam guide for later.  Unfold the strip and lay it out flat again.
Lay the end of the binding strip out flat against the edge of the quilt; then lay the beginning of the binding strip out flat against the edge of the quilt on top of the end of the strip. Mark the edge of the beginning of the binding strip by chalking a line on the end of the binding strip.
Measure the binding strip width (for this quilt, it was 2½" and draw a second line to the left of the first (thus, the second line is closer to the end of the binding strip rather than closer to the stitching).
Bring the end of the binding strip forward; open the strip, and lay it out flat with the right side up, which will show the two lines chalked. Open the beginning of the binding strip; bring it forward at a 90° angle to the end of the binding strip; and lay it out on top with the right side down between the chalked lines. Finally, pin the strips into position. I should have used colored pin-heads because the white ones don't show up in this picture very well.
The press line indicates where the seam should be sewn on the 45° angle. Fortunately, this picture shows the pins a little better.
Before trimming the excess binding strip fabric, fold the strip in and pull the quilt taunt to check the length. If the binding strip and quilt do not lie flat together at an even tension, pull out the seam and start over.
After confirming the length is correct, trim the excess fabric from the ends of the binding strip at ¼".
Press the seam flat.
Re-fold the binding strip and re-press.
Align the binding strip along the edge of the quilt and stitch in place.  

Tara's Birthday Quilt




Joyce and I collaborated on a quilt for her niece's birthday. Tara recently moved to Portland, OR and we miss her. She was a regular at our "Stampin Up" nights at Laura's house. Joyce did all the embroidery and piecing and I did the machine quilting and binding. Have I mentioned how much I hate attaching binding?? I don't mind sewing it down by hand but I hate attaching it as much as I hate basting. We used a basting spray from Sulky so we wouldn't have to baste. Some of the embroidery patterns were from a Better Homes and Garden Quilt Sampler issue. Joyce hopped on line and went through all her books to find more images. Tara's birthday is around Halloween and she absolutely loves everything about Halloween so we thought it would be the perfect gift for her. I think she looks happy snuggled under it. Her newborn cousin is tucked under the quilt on her shoulder. New babies always make her smile, but I'd like to think some of the smile is for the new quilt.

Laura's Birthday Quilt




Joyce and I have been planning on making Laura a quilt for her birthday for some time now. I shopped and shopped and Joyce and I could not agree on what Laura would like. On impulse I picked up a Moda Milk Chocolate Candy Bar at Threads of Time. It was 15 minutes past closing and I had NOTHING in my basket. I decided with a 160 fabrics in the pack that surely there had to be a few that Laura liked. I decided the best use of the 2.5" by 5" rectangles was to sew them to a solid rectangle and turn them into four patches. Joyce was going to embroidery all "Stampin Up" images because Laura is our Stampin Up pusher/demonstrator. It's possible that Joyce and I are addicted to fabric, paper and ink. We were just going to sew together the four patches interspersed with the occasional embroidered block. Apparently, I can't do anything random. While Joyce is probably tucked away in her bed, I decided that I should "frame" each of Joyce's embroidered square with the four patch squares turning them into 12" 9 patch blocks. I think it's going to be really nice and I hope Joyce approves because I'm pushing on and trying to figure out how I can sneak over to the Fabric Center in Morris to get some sashing. I'm guessing that they are carrying the lines of fabric in the "Candy bar" but I'll phone first just to be sure.
I apologize for the sideways image. Picase won't load my images so I'm winging it with a different method.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Noticeable Progress

I finished the quilting on the Zen quilt last night, and tonight I put the binding strip on, so all the machine work is done on Zen, with only hand-stitching the binding strip down on the back remaining.  So now two of the five Christmas quilts are to the binding stage.  I have two more at the machine quilting stage (Arcadia #1 and Amish Steps #1), but now I have to figure out which one is next up, but I think it will be Arcadia #1.

I also wanted to post here to remind myself where the good diagram is that I use to figure out how to join the beginning and ending of the binding strip.  That diagram is in Eileen Wright's Twist-and-Turn Bargello Quilts, but I have modified her procedure just a little bit.  I had intended to enumerate the steps to my method, but the what I really need to do is illustrate the steps with pictures or perhaps post a video.  We'll see.

Okay, time to run the pups out one last time & hit the sack.  I'm exhausted but quite satisfied.  Oh, and with two of the five quilts nearly "in the bag",  I'm starting to breathe a little easier about Christmas deadlines.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Four is too many!

Kara and I need to admit, once and for all, that four quilts is too many to layer and baste in a single evening that starts after 3pm!  Kara arrived around 7:30pm or so, but we didn't go "quilts up" till about 8pm or so.  I'm relieved Kara didn't have an accident driving home in the wee hours, but my butt is totally dragging on the ground now.  The christmas quilting countdown clock is not scaring me quite so badly now.

Here's my holiday status report:
  • Amish Steps #1 (pieced; layered, & basted; ready for machine quilting)
  • Amish Steps #2 (all machine work completed; binding in progress)
  • Arcadia #1 (pieced; layered, & basted; ready for machine quilting)
  • Zen #1 (pieced; layered & basted; machine quilting approximately 50%)
  • Arcadia #1 (fabric purchased & washed 
So it's only that last item that has me worried!  I also have two birthday quilts in the queue, and I haven't figured out anything for Grantwardo, although I will wait till then end & then piece something to wrap up & give to him, to be finished in the new year.

    Sunday, October 17, 2010

    Quiltatorium TV Project


    Grantward's contribution to the quilts as christmas gifts has been to buy and install a TV in the quiltatorium.  I would have been happy with a 27'' simple LCD TV, but when he initially dragged his feet, I had to deploy the Grantward OCD mode intervention:  I started shopping for it myself and mentioned crap TV sets that would bug the brown stuff out of him.  In no time he'd found a refurbished set from LG (LED/LCD at 42'').  Before I knew it, a Blu-ray player joined the party, and on Friday the DirecTV cutie showed up to set up the multiswitch correctly to allow multi-room playback.  Now I can watch the shows stacked up on the other DVRs that I haven't been able to get to because I'm too lazy to move my sewing machine to another room.  Now the only problem is that the sound system for the TV in the bedroom is too loud when Grant's watching something different in that room while I quilt.  He's already shopping for cube speakers {insert evil grin here}.

    Layer and Baste-a-thon Excitement

    I'm completely stoked that Kara is coming over tonight to layer and baste:  three quilts worth, I think, or it is four.  Are we insane?  Perhaps.  I spent the morning and early afternoon putting borders on Amish Steps #1, and then the late afternoon was spent ironing backing fabric and joining two pieces of standard width cloth for the backing for Arcadia #1.  That backing fabric was really horrifying to press because it was tea-dyed (really cool effect and awesome color as the recipient as a tea aficionado; but, the damned patterns (subtle as they may be) look like wrinkles in the cloth.  So I just looked at the TV and did it by feel (more about the TV in a minute).

    Having all the prep work done (except moving the dining room chairs), I spent about 40 minutes putting some more triangles together for Hunter's Star #1 (a birthday quilt, so lower priority, despite the birthday being in the first part of the year).  I had enough to start playing with layout, so now I've settled on the background fabric making squares on point, but I have to decide which ones will make whole squares only and which will be split to go up against the back ground.  Consider these two layouts and that I want the green border fabric to be on the inside, with the blue on the outside.  Grant likes the paisley on the outside, and I think I agree with him, especially with the blue border on the outside.  Have an opinion?  Drop a comment and let me know what you think.

    Layout One: Blue Squares Outside


    From Hunter's Star


    From Hunter's Star



    Layout Two: Paisley Squares Outside

    Friday, October 15, 2010

    Rapid Fire Hunter's Star Class

    This post is just a tiny bit overdue as the class was nearly a week ago.  I haven't taken pictures of the one block that I finished in class because it's been a helluva long week (stoopid day job).  The class was mostly fabulous, with a few glitches.  First, Kara and I both loved the "board" that the instructor created.  She essentially created a large poster on a tri-fold display board to illustrate all the steps.  She used thumb-tacks to attach real fabric examples that could easily be removed and examined as she explained the process.  That was truly inspired and quite awesome.  My fanny became a bit chapped, though, as she walked us through the first fabric cut and had all three of us cut the wrong size strips out of two fabrics.  Of course, had she instructed us to cut 2.25" strips when we needed 1.75" rather than the other way 'round, then we would have wasted far less fabric.  As it was, I had to go back to Sew Sassy the next day to buy another 1/4" yard of two fabrics.  I guess I can only really blame her for half the fabric waste, as I decided to cut four, rather than two, strips to avoid re-straightening my fabric after I got home.  I'm just glad I didn't cut more!  The second thing that irked was her criticism of my fabric choices, although she was respectful; having just given us the wrong instruction and wasted our fabric, perhaps she should have thought twice about telling me I didn't have enough contrast and needed lighter colors to "pop" the stars.  And at least she admitted she was wrong, after I had the first square assembled.  The other thing that sucked was Kara not feeling well half-way through and needing to ditch early.  I missed my quilting buddy for the second half!  I thought I was going to get the whole quilt top done last weekend with Columbus Day, but between laundry and errands, the time just slipped through my fingers.  I did finish all the strip initial cutting and sub-cutting for the first Hunter's Star quilt.

    After a quick glance at the calendar and realization of how few weekends there are between now and Christmas, I decided to stall out the Hunter's Star #1 quilt to get back to x-mas prezzie quilting, so I got the first 8 rows of Amish Steps #1 sewn together tonight.  I'm not sure if I'll get it finished by Sunday or not when Kara and I have tentatively planned some basting, but I do have Arcadia #1 to layer & baste, and that might be all I can handle as the dining room table isn't quite high enough for me to baste comfortably.  There are worse things, though.

    Monday, October 4, 2010

    Block a day


    This is 54-40 or fight. It's my first block for the 140 block quilt called Sylvia's Bridal Sampler. There are some blocks in the pattern that I've always wanted to try. I didn't know anything about the book that the quilt evolved from. I read mysteries, just not those. I'm still not inclined to read the Elm Creek Quilt books. I'll just continue on with James Lee Burke, Janet Evanovich, Robert Crais, Charlaine Harris, etc. I tend to listen to books on tape while I quilt. I'm planning on using scraps from the stash for this quilt. So far, it's heavy with blue and yellow and lighter colors. It will be interesting to see what color scheme develops.
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    Finished!


    Abby's quilt is finished. She didn't do very well with the photography. I'll have her try again today.
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    Sunday, October 3, 2010

    Arcadia 1 Update

    I just finished piecing the top for Arcadia 1.  I still need to piece the backing, which is a really cool tea-dyed fabric (but alas, not a wide-bolt tea-dyed fabric, but we can't have everything).  Oh, and I need to piece the binding strips together.  I really liked the piecing on this quilt, especially the explicit pressing instructions that guided me without fail through all but the last few seams.  I'm not sure why the pattern author didn't continue with the best pressing for joining the squares into row or for joining the rows.  I was surprised to find that the instructions asked me to cut two extra width-of-fabric sashing strips (I guess I might have needed at least one of them for fabric with more shrinkage), but then I also had not one, but two extra strips for the outer border; at 6" wide, that's a third of a yard.  I'd mind having bought that extra fabric a little less if it weren't cut, but there are worse things.

    Paging Kara to the layering & basting station!

    Oh, and here are some pictures of the top:


    From Arcadia


    From Arcadia


    From Arcadia


    From Arcadia