Tag: Fusible Batting

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.