I lost my quilting virginity...

Yes, it’s true, last week I lost my quilting virginity.

And it was GREAT!

Since my mom has been issued with a 3 week ban from my blog, I can now post this.

I tend to use my mom as a crafting guinea pig – whatever new thing I want to try, I make her that for Christmas (and she hasn’t complained so far!)

This year it’s a lap quilt!

I went to Quintessential Quilts in Morley and they were really helpful.  I bought a kit, since I wanted the fabric and pattern ready to go, since this must be posted in a couple of weeks!  EEK!

I got this pattern

The lady there said it would be easy to put together, so I liked the sound of that. I learned that you need a feature fabric and two contrasts (flower fabric = feature, purple and green fabrics = contrast 1 and contrast 2).

So I cut 11 2.5″x44″ strips out of my feature and my two contrast fabrics.  I then sewed the contrast 1 strip to the feature strip and then those two to the contrast 2 strip.  I then cut these strips into 6.5″ x 6.5″ blocks. These are the blocks you sew together to make rows and then sew the rows together!

Phew!  This was a lot more work than I had anticipated and you need to be uber precise too so everything fits nicely together.  When I finished sewing 2 rows of blocks together and was ready to attach them, I had to make sure the seams would match up exactly.

So, I used a Susan Khalje tip (<3 her!) and sewed just the joins together with a basting stitch and then checked the match.  That way, I only had to undo 1″ of stitching if they didn’t match.  The basting kinda acted like ‘pins’ when I sewed the rows together, so there wasn’t much shifting during sewing.  BIG bonus was I didn’t have to worry about seams matching when doing the final stitching.

It worked great, although I don’t know if it’s the ‘right’ way to do it or not (not being a quilter and all).  Here’s a bit of it!

**UPDATE!!  Quilt top done!  Now onto basting!

Not so fast!!!  I have no backing and no wadding.  Okay, off to Spotlight…hang on.

Okay, I’m back and I must say that this quilting thing is NOT CHEAP.  Holy canoli man, I spent $97 on just backing, wadding and thread…an my quilt is only 1.5m x 1.5m….sigh…she better like it!!!  :P

Here’s the backing fabric (polka dots are super subtle, sorry)

I also got a nice cotton wading so it can be an ‘all season’ quilt.

I cut the backing and wadding about 5cm larger on all sides than the top.  I then laid it down and pinned it to the carpet (rather unorthodox, but whatever works).  I then cut the backing to the same size and laid it on top and pinned it to the backing.  I then covered that with my top and we have a sandwich!

I came across this tutorial about hand basting  a quilt and saw that she used a tailor’s basting stitch!  What a great idea!  This stitch has been used for centuries in tailoring to attach hair canvas to the fashion fabric and works a treat to prevent fabric shifting.  Here is an immense amount of tailor’s basting…

I’m really happy so far, and will post piccies of the final product, which I *better* finish soon.  Just as soon as my walking foot arrives…tick tock!  Have you quilted before?  Do you want to try?  Do you have any great advice for me about machine quilting?  I’m ALL ears if you do!  :)

Until then…Relax and Enjoy,

Kat

PS

BTW, if you want a great tutorial for your first quilt…check out this one – it’s a great overview with fantastic pictures and instructions – it helped me a lot since I know nothing about quilting!

About these ads