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Last week I showed you the new way that I had learned to make a Franken-batting……..
This post contains affiliate links. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn commissions by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. I may earn a small commission if you purchase thru the links provided here. It does NOT change the price that you pay for any items you buy.
When I left you on Thursday, I had made one of the leaves for my “Monarch and Milkweed” challenge but had run into a problem with quilting the veins…..
There simply wasn’t enough to hold onto!!
Then I started thinking about the washout stabilizer that I had used for a previous quilt It is a sticky-sided water-soluble Vilene that comes on a 10-yard roll. If you are interested, you can purchase it HERE.
SO…..I made four more leaves…..
…turned them and marked the veins…..
Next, I rolled out a small portion of the Vilene and peeled off the backing paper…..
The side facing up is now sticky.
I placed the leaves on top….
…and placed another piece of the Vilene over it…..
Now, I had another problem……I couldn’t see the veins that I had drawn!!!
I fixed that by using the wash-out pen and re-drawing the veins on top of the Vilene.
I also switched to my Sit-Down Longarm so that I could use the applique foot…..
The stabilizer held everything in place and it was SO very easy to stitch the lines now.
I cut out the excess stabilizer…..
….and pitched them into a warm water bath…..
Immediately, the water became murky with the sloughed-off stabilizer…..
YUK!!!!
I moved to another water bath and lightly scrubbed the pieces with my fingers….
The final water bath was completely clear…..
So now I had FIVE leaves to play with…..
The original one is second from the right.
I LOVE using the Vilene!! It has a fabric feel to it so it isn’t ‘slinky” like some stabilizers.
When I used it previously I sometimes had trouble with my needle getting gummed up but it wasn’t a big issue!!
So now I have leaves to play with!!!
I am getting excited about this piece!!!!
One of my favorite things about quilting is to motivate others and help 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.
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!!
How do you make Franken-batting?
One of my favorite things about quilting is to motivate others and help 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.
As promised, today I want to show you a way to store your specialty rulers….
You know….those that you don’t use every day but need to keep safe, and more importantly, be able to find the ruler AND instructions when you need it!!
Check out this video for my solution…..
(IF you receive notification of this blog via email, the video will NOT appear and you will need to click into the actual blog to get to the video. It’s one of those “technical” issues I can’t do anything about!!)
As you can see, the solution is simple, compact and will definitely protect all of my specialty rulers.
If you want to purchase the same product, here is the Amazon link…..
Do you have another way to store your rulers? If so, please reach out and let me know. I LOVE to learn new ideas!!
If you subscribe to my mailing list, you can receive this free pattern for “Dancing Squares”…..
THIS POST DISAPPEARED OVERNIGHT…..LET’S TRY AGAIN!!!
If you are like me, you have a LARGE number of quilting rulers. I mean, once you get started with ruler quilting, it is NECESSARY to buy more.
Am I right?
But, the trick is how to store all of those rulers. None of them are large but they can sure get messy in a hurry…..
BUT….. I have come up with a wonderful solution…….
(IF you receive notification of this blog via email, the video will NOT appear and you will need to click into the actual blog to get to the video. It’s one of those “technical” issues I can’t do anything about!!)
