Hints and Tips 10- Quilt as You Go Method 3

 

 

 

Trim your quilted blocks to the desired size as in the previous two tutorials.

Cut 3 ½  inch wide sashing strips for the front of the quilt.

Fold the strips to the middle and press as in the previous methods.

 

Lay your two quilted blocks side by side, right sides up.

Take your first block and sashing strip. With right sides together place the unfolded edge on the RHS of the block as shown. Match raw edges and pin in place.

 

Stitch. This seam will be 1 inch wide.

 

Flip the LHS block over on top of the RHS block, right sides together exposing the seam . Stitch this seam in a similar fashion to the previous one.

 

To make the sashings for the back you can either choose a decorative fabric or one that matches your backing.

 

The back sashings are cut at 3 inches  in width and are pressed in the same manner.

The  next step is going to be to lay the folded and pressed  back sashing onto the back of your blocks centreing between the two visible seams made by the front sash.

 It should fit very well if you have trimmed your blocks well and been accurate with your seam allowances on your front sashings.

Using bobbin thread to match the sashing on the front you are going to stitch it in place very carefully, making your stitching close to its two edges. However, by using the edge of your machine foot to help you the stitching on the front will be nice and straight.

 

 Move the needle over to the right/ or left depending on which side you are stitching and using the edge of your foot as a guide against the previous stitching line on the right/left stitch the length of the sashing. Check that you have the needle in the right position before you sew too far along.

Move the needle to the opposite position and sew along the remaining side of the sashing if you wish to sew them all in the one direction or just turn your block up the other way to do the remaining side.

When you turn your block over the machine stitching down the front sash should be nice and straight.

 

 

 

New Heirloom Inspired Project

I have spent the day today designing and making this tissue box cover using one of the designs from the Martha Pullen Internet Embroidery Club (IEC). I stitched the design out white on white using white cotton and trimmed with a vintage gathered French cotton lace.

Project 11 Tissue Box Cover (Martha Pullen IEC)

The instructions have been sent out to those who are participating in my IEC projects group.

 

### #       If you are an AOL customer you will probably not receive them as they seem to always block my emails. If you email me I will try and get back to you within a couple of days.  ####

Hints and Tips 10- Quilt as You Go Method 2 (Piped Binding Method)

Piped Binding Front

Piped Binding Back

Construct as for previous method ( Method 1) up to and including placing the backing strip. We do not use lace and ribbon for this method but rather piped binding for the front.

 

Cut sashing strips 2 ¼ inches wide.

 

To make the piping cut narrow strips of fabric wide enough the cover the piping cord + seam allowance of at least ¼ inch. Use fine piping cord. It is a good idea to buy thicker piping cord and just take out the individual strands or use perle embroidery cotton. The Groovin Piping Trimming Tool from Susan Cleveland is a great tool to help you make accurate piping for this method.If you do not have a piping foot you can use a pintuck foot as I have.

 

Trim piping seam allowance to 1/4”

 

Sew the piping to both edges of the sashing strips, again using your piping /pintuck foot.

 

 

Press the piping to the wrong side of the sashing strip as shown.

 

Cut a strip of batting 1 ¼ inches  wide and the length of the sashing. Lay this in the sashing between the piping as I have done. This provides a bit of padding to the sashing but you can easily omit this step if you choose to.

Centre the sashing over where the quilt blocks are butted together and stitch down both sides. You can use an edge stitching foot/ piping foot or a pintuck foot as I have.

Missing my helper

I was just sorting through some photos and found this lovely pic of my little sewing room helper. Think it is my most favourite pic of him. We are slowly coming to terms with him not being here. It is hard when we are out in the garden and there is no longer a little furry bundle in all of his favourite sleeping places that he had made into comfy little hollows to enjoy the sun as it tracked across the sky.

Hints and Tips 10- Quilt as You Go Method 1

For the next few hints and tips I am going to be discussing my favourite methods of quilt as you go. These are the ones I consider to be the most user friendly and easiest to accomplish.

 

Remember to use the Print Friendly button to print or download as a pdf.

Method 1 Using Lace and Ribbon as Sashing

 

 

 

With this method you are able to quilt right up to the edges of the block. You do need to allow for the part of the quilt block that goes under the lace sashing when determining the size of your blocks. Basically all the blocks butt up against each other and there is no need to leave the backing larger etc.

 

Complete your embroidery and quilt block as desired.

 

 

 

Trim the block to the desired size.

 

Cut 2 inch wide strips from the fabric that you are going to use for the sashing on the back of the quilt. I usually just cut a long strip and cut as required as  I am going along.To turn a cut strip into a finished sashing strip fold it in half right side facing half and press.

Open it up, fold each side into the middle and iron flat, similar to the method in making the straps of a bag. Your strip should now be 1 inch wide. For this reason your lace needs to be at least this width. If it is not then you need to make this back sashing a little narrower. There is no reason why you cannot see if these strips will go through a bias tape maker and get pressed that way. However, you can skip all of these pressing steps and I will explain that later. 

Lay your two quilted blocks down side by side with the backs of the block facing upward.

 

 

With the wrong side of the block facing the unfolded right side of the sashing , match up the right hand side edges as shown. If you wish you can pin in place.

Stitch along the right hand side fold of the sashing as shown. This seam should be close to ½ inch.

####If you know how to get an accurate 1/2 inch stitching line then there is no need to press the lines in. This line must always be 1/4 of the original cut width of sashing.###

 I no longer press these lines in.

The back of your block with the sashing should now look like this.

Flip  the left hand side block over on to the right hand side block as shown so that the  left hand sides of the sashing and block now match. Once again stitch down the folded ½ inch seam allowance.

The back of your blocks should now look like this.

The front of your quilt blocks should look like this, evenly butted up together

 

Centre the lace evenly over the butted edges of the front blocks. I like to stitch down close to the right hand side edge of the lace before laying the ribbon in behind it. It is always a good idea to use ribbon that is about 1/8 -1/4 inch narower than the lace so that it fits nicely under the lace.

 

 

Finally stitch down the left hand side of the lace. The back of your quilt blocks should look like this. You can see the stitching lines from where the lace was stitched to the front.

Back of quilt with ribbon lace sashing

Front of quilt with ribbon lace sashing

 

 If you wish to find out where to source cotton lace both cluney lace (as in my quilt above) and heirloom French lace (as in my nightgown etc) at very good prices please email me and I can give you a list of good suppliers.



More cat quilts

I have had two more people send in pics of their cat quilts . Shirley has finished hers on her new longarm. Love the way she has added a large border of pieced blocks. The best thing about our quilt projects is that they are all based on the 2 1/2 inch strip widths and that makes it very easy to add to them if you want.

Shirley's Aristocat Quilt

 

 

Faye has also sent in a pic of her quilt in progress. It is just tremendous to see all the different interpretations.

Faye's Aristocat Quilt

 

Saturday's Exploits- Working Bee for the Little Penguins

Saturday morning husband and I joined with quite a few other members of Friends of Lillico penguins to do some maintenance near the penguin habitat and the public viewing platform. We cleaned up litter, planted new seedlings, did a lot of weeding and generally tried to make the environment for the little penguins more safe and inviting for them. To do the weeding we had to walk along the shingle beach which is made up of large oval shaped rocks mainly. Make sure you click on the pics to see some larger views

 

Shingle rocks on Lillico Beach

 

 

The main weed we had to contend with was  Cape Ivy and it gets everywhere. I managed to salvage a couple of seedlings that were being strangled by this insidious weed. It makes its way into all the plants and is time consuming and very hard to remove from the dense vegetation that you can see below.

 

The little penguins make their way this beach, over the pebbles, driftwood and through the vegetation up into their burrows. Many of them have burrows in this vegetation.

Lillco Beach to the north of the viewing platfrom

Lillico Beach to the east of the viewing platform

Lillico Beach to the west of the viewing platform

 



The beach has about a 50cm drop from the edge of the sea weed in the pics to the water's edge. As a result the turbulence of the water and a little breeze was stirring up a fair bit of sand.

Of course with any working bee there are always to many chiefs

Here we are signing off to make sure they did not have to send out a search party looking for us at the end.

 

 

Freebie roundup

The new Sewing themed ABC has started over at the Bernina Blog on Wednesdays. You will find the red link Freebie-Naeh-ABC-B half way down the page.



Hatched in Africa have a lovely little lavender freebie but you have to log in to pick it up.

 

 

 It is Week 5 of the San Francisco Stitch Co Yahoo group Spell Binder mystery. Make sure you go to the group and sign up if you wish to do this mystery project. Each instalment is only available for a week and if you miss one you can purchase it from their website for $1.49 . Looks like it is Big Ben for this week. I am still trying to decide what to do with these designs. This looks like like a great little design even if you are not making the full project.

 





The new edition of Quiltmaker has a table runner designed by Sarah Vedeler. The designs she has used are on her website for download for a couple of months but pick them up now and I will more than likely come up with a project for them possibly a table runner as well.

Thought this combo would look fantastic.

 

The Quiltery have a fabulous new freebie from their new Owl collection called the Branch Office. You can find the freebie HERE

Urban Threads have a lovely  freebie called Garden Party until June 3.

 

 If you are wanting any of their designs they are having a sale with 50% off single designs and 25% off packs. I might buy their Parisian Love Letter Pack designs to make some cushions for the lounge.