18 November 2011

Finishing touches


OK, now that I have exercised my muscles wrestling this now very heavy quilt, I decided to call my brother and tell him how beautiful it was. As I mentioned yesterday, he said he’d rather have it too big than too small. I checked out the size of a queen quilt which was 90”X90”. This one is about 80” square right now so I needed to add a border. The directions for adding a border were in Marianne’s tutorials.  I kind of liked the 4” look so I cut pieces again, (4 ½” wide) wanting the broken line of multiple fabrics instead of a solid border.  I over estimated each side and I also cut and sewed 2 – 45” strips of the polka dot underside fabric to face the top fabric as well as a 90”X 4” batting piece.
                                                 Trimming the "tails" off the row connector

One of the things Marianne wrote in her blog was a warning about the thickness of trying to sew two sandwiches together; that is the finished edge of the quilt , two layers of fabric with batting between, and two layers of fabric with batting between for the boarder. She suggested sewing the top and bottom fabric to the edge of the quilt and butting the batting to the edge like in the connecting strips. Bowing to the master, I took her suggestion. This worked very well and I finished off each border with 5 rows of quilting to hold the batting in place. I did the 2 sides first, then the top and bottom edges not in the log cabin style.
                          Just finished sewing the top and bottom border fabrics to the finished quilt edge
                                              Placing the 90" batting strip "into" the boarder
                                                 Adding the 5 rows of quilting to the border

I cleaned up the edges with the rotary cutter in anticipation of applying a binding.

Again I cut masses of 2 ½” wide strips and sewed them together. I forgot to connect them with bias seams and when I turned the binding I had great lumps of fabric at each join. Bad me. It was pretty much too late to change courses mid-stream so I just horsed my way through. I didn’t take any pictures of the binding but it came out pretty nicely. I also didn’t take a picture of the words I free motioned along the edge of the quilt since it was personal and to my brother.
                                               Displayed on a double bed hanging way down
      The back of the quilt with polka dots and solid olive greens used. You can just glimpse the boarder

I found an empty box that was the exact, and I a mean exact, size of the quilt which I had folded so that the sentiment free motioned into the border would be on top facing my brother as he opened the box.

For someone who doesn’t make bed quilts, I can tell you this was a project of love and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the process. Marianne made it very easy with her excellent tutorials. I hope I made this process easy to follow and perhaps, if the spirit moves you to make someone special a warm gift, you might try this technique as I did.

Bye for now,
Beth

4 comments:

  1. The finished quilt is beautiful! Thanks again for sharing this.

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  2. I love the finished quilt but even more love your directions! Your brother may stay warm from your quilt buy perhaps my friends and family will be kept warm from your tutorial! LOL

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  3. THE quilt has turned out beautiful! And you finished it so quickly. I always get distracted by other projects and work and stuff so it takes me forever to finish a quilt.
    Thanks for sharing!

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  4. That is the reason behind doing the quilt with the QAYG method. It took about 2 days of NOT steady work. I finished the blocks in hours and it can be one of those quilt-a-block-or-two-a-day kind of things. I am now taking out a piece of felt (my batting) and doing up a large square about 2X2 feet using the same method of attaching fabric and cutting it up into round cup holders (like a cup cuff) so you don't burn your hand and giving them to friends at Christmas. I'll surely blog about it.

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