Spring Bargello - the Process

With the piecing and appliqué done it was time to start the sandwiching and quilting process. I am fortunate to have several of these metal (army) tables in the room I use for teaching, so moving 4 together gives me the ideal space to stretch and pin my quilt layers. Lately a local (South African) designer of 100% cotton fabric has brought out really nice designs at a fraction of the cost of imported cottons and I love using these Da Gama fabrics for backing and the fact that these are 1.50 meters wide makes it even nicer.

Step 1: Stretch the backing fabric nice and tight. I used bulldog clips at the sides and masking tape at the top and bottom.

 

Step 2: Batting rolled out onto the backing and the quilt top neatly straightened on top of the batting

Step 3: Starting from the centre pin securely through all 3 layers

Batting not wide enough for the sides? Time to fetch the drawer of remnant batting and I might be breaking all the rules here but I simply don’t bother joining my batting. I feel that I quilt intensively enough in order for my batting not to move anywhere so I simply add a piece where needed, spray baste it in place and continue adding remnant pieces until I have enough batting.

Meeko, our parrot, doing the final inspection to see if I didn’t leave any visible gaps in the batting.

Step 4: Quilting


I then tried something different. I found a motif I liked, enlarged and printed this, traced it on Stitch a Tear and spaced these on my quilt top to stitch through it and removed the paper afterwards. Unfortunately the Bargello pattern/fabric steals all the attention and the quilt motif can be seen much better on the back side of the quilt.

I simply echoed the borders and the quilt fits snugly on a double bed.

Completed: 27 September 2010

I feel rich

Spring has arrived in South Africa and along with it the will do start new projects and do fun things. Not in my wildest dreams could I image this would include a new dog. Okay rather an old (4 years) dog in a new home – ours!! Sad story about screwed up humans who threaten to divorce unless the dog goes. So without much choice by Coco she was adopted by us and I plan to make her stay as pleasant as possible.

In my post on Sorting my space I mentioned new fabric and it arrived yesterday. This was actually such a fun but daring purchase. A quilt shop owner from a nearby city closed shop and sold her fabric for almost half price provided you buy for a certain amount. So I borrowed money from DH. This guy is sometimes too good to be true. I mean really…. I don’t work and other than the money he gives me and a little extra from teaching, I don’t have an income but still…. he lent me money. The catch in this purchase was that I could not choose my fabric as it was already moved to a warehouse and when purchasing they start from one side, count down your 135 meters (or fat quarter equivalent) and pack your box.


So this turned out to be my surprise lucky dip and I loved it! Wouldn’t you?

I already pre-washed 7 one yard pieces for my next project.

Spring Bargello borders done

Good idea………… leave all those dreaded jobs for when a friend comes over to quilt with you. Had Karin over on Friday night to help me stay awake and we started quilting at 7pm and worked right through the night until 5 am the Saturday morning and yes, I got all those appliqué motifs satin stitched to the background. Even with her here it didn’t make me enjoy the process more, so we took plenty of breaks watching quilt videos on QNN TV and got plenty of tips and saw pretty cool things. However watching these made us realize just how deprived South African quilters are, we get to see so much but get so little over here. Luckily we have people like Kelly from IHAN not scared to send her stock anywhere in the world.


The next step was to put some emphasis on my appliqué motifs with trapunto. I simply spray basted (505 Spray adhesive) a batting strip behind the appliqué motifs and then used monofilament thread on top to stitch as close to the motifs as I could.

Before cutting the batting away and with the comfort of still having the strips separated from the top I’ve added some decorative free-motion stitching to the appliqué motifs with Catsidy keeping a watchful eye on my work.

Spray basting turned out to be a very bad idea as I had a hard time separating the batting from the fabric especially in the smaller areas where I did the stitching and I ended up snipping through my top fabric. See where the tip of the scissors disappears in the fabric. I then had to cut, iron and satin stitch 4 more leaves to make both borders look the same.

With the batting cut away it is finally time to trim the borders to size and add these to the quilt top.

File cover tutorial

On Wednesday morning we had our very first meeting for our National Quilt Festival held here in Bloemfontein in 2013. Festival coordinator, Iessie, scheduled meetings with every responsible group and being involved in 3 different groups (treasury, goodie bags & accommodation) I sat there from 9 am with just the company changing occasionally. When it was friend Karin’s turn to join me she noticed Iessie’s fabric covered file and loved it, insisting that WE (I simply have to get just as excited whether I want to or not) must make these too. I searched the internet for a quick tutorial but couldn’t find anything, so here goes my take on this.

Trace the outlines of your file on paper then adding and marking a quarter inch seam allowance to the long sides on the top and bottom for the binding and a half an inch to the shorter left and right sides. This allows for space when the file is closed and the quarter inch for the binding. I also marked the middle panel on my paper pattern.

I cut a double layer of fabric somewhat larger than my pattern as I wanted to quilt the cover. The quilting however can be omitted. I did all-over quilting first in a variegated purple thread and then echoed these with a variegated green. When not quilting (or when done quilting), you can cut the fabric the size of your paper pattern. I marked the cover with all the seam lines as well as the middle panel to make placement of the outside pocket easier.

I selected a novelty print for the outside front pocket and quilted this too before adding a quarter inch binding around the edges. The pocket was stitched in the ditch where the binding was stitched on.  I also added a magnetic fastener for the pocket to close but this too can be skipped.

For the size of the inside flaps I marked in 9 inches from the short side of my paper pattern. You can make these as wide or as narrow as you want but if much wider you might have to fold the file sides all the way to the back to be able to get the cover over. Cut 2 in fabric. Mark a quarter inch on one long side of each flap.

Iron a fold on the line folding fabric wrong sides together to create a quarter inch seam then fold over once more and stitch this seam. (The flaps are still not stitched to the main cover).

Then you need to decide what (and if) you want to add to the inside flaps. I decided on an elastic strip to hold pens and a smaller pocket.

 

I drew a pattern for the pocket – mine was a 5 inch square and cut 2 layers from my selection for the pocket fabric the size of the paper pattern.

I stitched around 3 sides of the square right sides together then turning it inside out and then marked the bottom edge of this pocket placement on the inside front flap.

The open edge of the pocket is placed on the marked line for the bottom of the pocket and then stitched down – this might look upside down but it should be this way. Then fold the pocket up onto the inside flap and topstitch around the 3 sides leaving the top open.

You can further decide to add or skip a top flap for the pocket. I drew the closing flap on my pattern then just added quarter inch seam allowance, cut 2 layers of fabric, placed wrong sides together stitched around all the edges except the long edge turned right side out and stitched in similar fashion as the pocket by first placing it with the raw edges towards the pocket, stitched a quarter inch from this edge after which I folded it back onto the pocket and topstitched it.

Iessie – the one by whom we saw the file cover – also had a pocket in her back flap and she warned that this was totally useless unless you wanted to hide money from your husband in it. So seeing that I made this cover for Karin I decided to add a rather big pocket and have Velcro to secure the open end – we don’t want her hidden money to lose now, do we?

Once everything you wanted on the inside flaps are stitched down you can simply place these on top of the cover matching raw edges and stay stitch them in place before adding the final binding all around the outside edges of the file.

This is what the end product looks like.

Sorting my space

I’m expecting plenty of new fabric but more about that later. In the mean time I’ve decided I needed to organize my sewing space as I never seem to have enough storage (nothing new for any quilter I suppose) but I have this memory problem……………….. if a certain ruler was in a certain drawer for x amount of time, I dare not move it or I will never find it again – not even if I moved it to the ruler rack. I will simply expect to find it where it has been from the start and boy if you want to see a tantrum, watch me open that drawer, NOT to find my ruler. Obviously the kids……… who else could it be? The main reason for this blog entry therefore is to allow me to get back to it and read where I put what!! Maybe it might also serve as an inspiration to someone out there? So this started out as my fat quarter drawers arranged by colour.

However when looking for a couple of fat quarters earlier I saw that I have lots of other sizes in these drawers and got really frustrated when I would just find the perfect colour and then realize it was not big enough. So while DH watched rugby on TV I repacked these – fat quarters or slightly bigger ONLY!! Every single piece of fabric was unfolded to check for size then neatly pressed, folded and packed back into the drawer.

Why o why would one do this???

Celebrating drawer 1 (black and gray) – this can become a fun affair but o dear, how empty the drawer looks. Major shopping to do!!

Too much wasted space per drawer so I decided to share colours in a single drawer – creating space and obviously celebrating drawer 1 AGAIN. Headache…. here we come!

I found heaps of fat quarters with cuts like these – not staying in the drawers any longer.

Couldn’t finish so with a throbbing head I continued the next day and wha-la…. all done leaving me with no less than 8 empty drawers and in defence of my small amounts per colour in each drawer the pile in the background (excluding the black cat) are lengths from 1 yard or more. Need to find another space for these.

Those unfortunate ‘idols’ who didn’t make it to either of these groups found their way to yet another set of colour coded drawers for remnants/scraps. Looking at the drawer containing the blues these are one big mess but I dig through these daily and have no intention of reorganizing them.