Tag: Fusible Batting

Ocean background….

Last weekend I posted about learning to make the curved strips.

They were put together in a series of sets of 4 or 5 strips…..

When it was time to fuse these strips together, I knew that it was important to keep the strip sets straight. If they are angled in any way then sewing the straight lines together with cause the piece to be angled.

But how was I going to keep them straight!!!

Happily, I had an idea to use freezer paper on my ironing board to keep them straight…..

I first ironed a piece of freezer paper on the ironing board…..

…..and then drew parallel lines on the paper…..

Now I had a guide to use to keep the strips straight!!

I moved each strip set to the ironing board…..

…..and split it up into strips…..

I started with the one un-cut strip and placed it on the line…..

I then kept adding strips……

….making sure that the outside lines stayed straight.

Once I was happy with the lines, I removed the Wonder-Under strips…..

…..and ironed it all in place.

When I was finished, EACH strip set was perfectly straight…..

…..and ready to be sewed together!!

Come back tomorrow to see the finished quilt!!!

It is a cute one!!!

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In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.

Cleaning out the batting!!

In all the 35 years that I have been quilting, I have NEVER worried much about how my batting was stored. Any leftover cuts just got tossed into the corner of the closet and, when I needed some for a new quilt, I would rifle thru them until I found one that would fit.

But, in the last few years, I started measuring the leftovers and marking how big each piece was…..

It was a good idea…..or rather PART of a good idea!!

There were two problems….. first of all, when you use safety pins to attach the size paper, bad things can happen…..

After this mishap, I got smart and just used the post-it note wrapped around the tie…..

The next step was to make a listing of the battings that I have on hand. Instead of writing it down on a piece of paper that I would lose, I went to my task board and dedicated a corner to battings…..

Now I just have to remember to mark them off when I use them!!

The final step was to bag up the smaller rolls and clean up my storage…..

I didn’t have a photo of “before” but I can GUARANTEE you that it looks SO much better!!

Now to get back to making quilts that can use up those bats!!!

Basting Saturday

Yesterday, I spent the day making backs and basting a couple of quilts that I have in progress.

The first one was the top that I showed a couple of weeks ago…..I am really pleased with how it turned out.

However, the back is probably the ugliest one in all of history. I decided to try Bonnie Hunter’s (http://www.quiltville.com/) idea of cutting scrap fabrics into 10-1/2 inch squares and piecing them together to form the back.

Well, the first thing that I learned is that not all fabrics will allow you to get four 10.5 inch squares out of one width. I think that I will use 9.5 or 10 inch squares next time.

The second thing that I learned is that you need to be a bit more careful in selecting colors for these squares……I think that I had too much variety in color and print design.

As I pieced these squares into strips, I realized that I had not done a wonderful job of cutting the squares and some of the sides didn’t line up properly. SO, after I had pieced each strip, I put it on the cutting board and evened the edges up….making the square not EXACTLY square.

I knew that I didn’t want to match seams, so I sewed the ends of the strips together into a circle and then randomly cut in the middle of one of the squares. I took them out to my garage (the only place that gives me enough open floor space) and decided on a decent pattern.

My NEXT mistake came in sewing these rows together……I apparently put one (or maybe two) of the rows together backwards and ended up with a whole series of squares of the same color together. Oh well…..it is only the back!!!!

I used Hobbs Fusible Batting to put this quilt together. Now I have to leave it for a few weeks until I get a brilliant idea for how to quilt it……I would welcome any ideas.