We are getting ready to travel overseas and time has become VERY precious. Among other things, I have to finish my Monarch challenge so that I can enter it before I leave!!
Consequently, I haven’t had time to do ANY more grid quilting!!!
So, today is going to be a throwback day and I want to share the design created by the Westalee Spin-E-Fex Ruler #16…..
It is an easy ruler to use and I love the design…..
Have you ever tried these rulers?? If so, I would LOVE to hear what you thought!!!
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If you have an interest in ruler quilting, check out this online course…..
When I left you on Sunday, the “More Milkweed Please” piece was at this stage…..
…and obviously, it needed more in the lower right-hand corner.
I decided to add a stem and leaves so first “practiced” the layout using paper, thinking of something like this…..
The stem was easiest to make so I started with it, first cutting a bias strip from the darkest green.
I sprayed it liberally with Magic Sizing…..
….ironed it dry and folded it into a typical bias strip…..
OKAY….that works…..
Now it was time for the leaves and I played with several different shapes before I settled on an elongated oval…..
I wanted them to be two-sided so I cut it out of two different fabrics, sewed around the edges, and cut a slit in the back piece.
After snipping a few bits along the curves…..
I turned it to make the leaf…..
It needed some veins, so I drew them in and moved to the machine to stitch them….
THAT is when I realized my problem!!
It was almost impossible to stitch them because there was nothing to hold onto so I didn’t have a lot of control and the stitching didn’t look great…..
At this point, I stopped for the day….frustrated because I couldn’t make it work the way that I wanted!!
Later that night I thought of the perfect solution……
Come back on Saturday for more…..
If you enjoy this blog, please share it with your friends!!!
It is the solution when you don’t have a batting piece that is big enough so you attach a bunch of smaller pieces to make one, much like Frankenstein being made out of lots of different parts.
As a quick aside, my FAVORITE Frankenstein was Peter Boyle in “Young Frankenstein”…..
Now back to our regularly scheduled blog…..
My Franken-battings sometimes look like this…..
Here I have overlapped the batting pieces slightly and sewn them in place. You are supposed to butt them up and use a zig-zag stitch, but my machine is straight-stitch only which means that I either pull out an old machine, or I overlap them slightly and sew them together.
BUT, I recently watched a YouTube video from “The Sewing Channel“, and she had a different method. I thought about this as I was preparing the batting for my “Monarch” piece, and decided to give it a try.
The first step is to get the batting flat and mostly unwrinkled. You can do this by laying it out, placing a piece of fabric or pressing sheet over it, and ironing it well.
Then you rotary cut straight edges on the two sides that will be joined…..
Next, cut some LIGHTWEIGHT fusible interfacing into 1.5-inch strips. In the video, she used Fusible Tricot (Pellon EK130 – Easy Knit). Since I didn’t have that particular one in my closet, I pulled another version….
Line up the cut edges and place the fusible strips across the two sides….
I chose to use several smaller strips rather than one long one (mostly because it was the easiest to cut out of my fusible!!).
Cover with fabric or pressing cloth and give it a good pressing…..
Now I had the batting in THREE pieces…..
I joined the two pieces to make the next row…..
…and laid it out again……
The final step was to join these pieces together. I chose to place them together so that the two joins were on opposite sides of the batting and not in line with each other.
Again, I used several pieces of fusible as I connected them……
And in just a few minutes, I had usable batting…..
Since this was only 24″, and since it was for a wall-hanging that would never be washed, I am happy with using the non-woven fusible.
HOWEVER, if I was making a larger quilt and, especially one that would be washed, I would be sure to use the stretchable Tricot fusible. And, I might even stick it down on both sides.
Is this faster than sewing them together????
Probably not!! BUT, it sure made a nicer-looking batting.
I love this idea for using up my smaller strips of batting and MAYBE it will help me clean out the batting-pieces box that is always overflowing!!
One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.
