Saturday, January 17, 2009

Zippity doo dah!




My, oh, my what a wonderful day! Finished up two samples for the shop out of Sandy Gervais' new line. It's red, white, blue and very cheerful. I totally enjoyed working with this line. While I was working on them I took a few pictures of my method of preparing for quiting so I could share it.
The first thing I do is press the back, using a little spray starch, then tape it wrong side up on my dining room table. I don't tape it too tight, just enough to make sure there are no wrinkles or ripples.
The batting goes on top of this, smoothed down and flat. I didn't have a piece of batting quite large enough for this project, so I pieced two sections of batting together to make one. Some people like to make a curved edge to stitch by layering the pieces one on top of the other and cutting a curved line with a rotary cutter, but I simply make a straight cut on one side of each piece and zig-zag together. You do have to make sure the batting pieces are the same type of batting, but this is a great way to use your extra leftover pieces.

The next step is to press the top and put it right side up on top of the batting. I use my hand to smooth out the top and make sure the seams are lying the way they should. Then I get out my mug of little safety pins and get to work. I pin about 6" apart, which is about the measurement of my thumb and first finger spread out. Once I get everything pinned I trim the edges about 1" away from the edge of the quilt. This helps prevent me from stitching any long pieces to the back of the quilt (yes, sometime this happens when I am going along at a great pace and don't pay attention to the edges). Now I'm ready for the quiting!

More new samples are coming, some pretty florals came home from the shop with me today!

2 comments:

Ashlawnfarms Rag Quilt Creations said...

I love it!

Mountain Home Quilts said...

Wow, I love both of those but the first one is stunning!