Finally settled on hand quilting the top I completed last week. The fabric is very sheer and the usual cotton batting seemed too bulky for it. Using a tip from our discussion on batting at the quilt guild a few months ago I used a pale yellow quilting flannel as batting. I think this will give the quilt a nice drape. Also IMO machine quilting sounded too harsh for this fabric, so hand quilting was the alternate choice. I got a 14x14 hand quilt frame, a ball of DMC Perle cotton size 5 thread in dark red and got started.
Haven't quite worked out the quilting pattern in my head but will improvise as I move along. I can be brave like that. :)
Last week found some time to work on the baby gift package. Finished off the bibs by adding some snap fasteners. They need to be hammered into place but it's real easy to do.
Lastly made two whole cloth baby quilts. I used one yard each of Ann Kelle Remix in sage and pink. For the backing I used a dotted minky. It was stretchy and had to be basted very closely to prevent slippage. I am not sure if I liked working with it but the final outcome was worth it. The quilts were put together using the same method as the burb cloths.
All done, packaged and ready to be shipped to CA.
I consider it a good weekend if I can spend sometime working on my sewing projects. So far today, admired this little rainbow number I got from the pillow swap at the quilt guild made by Jess.
Finished piecing a quilt top.
Picked out a backing fabric for this quilt.
This cotton fabric is very sheer and think a thin flannel batting & hand quilting would work well for it.
And finally a bit of stash building.
So far so good.
A friend of mine gave me some of her unused fabric and to show my gratitude I decided to make her something from the stash. She did mention the black fabric reminded her of a starry night sky so I put together a pillowcase with that fabric. There was enough to make only one case. I used this tutorial to add the french seam.
Got a neat glass bowl from her too. It makes a perfect spool holder.
Don't we all love a friend who keeps on giving :)
I just about had enough selvedges to use for a small project. Started out by attaching them together to get a selvedge fat quarter so to speak. After I was done I did some internet browsing and realized that you have to sew them on a backing fabric. Since I hadn't done that, I got a piece of double sided interfacing and fused a piece of muslin to reinforce the back of the fabric.
Then used this to create the front of the cushion cover.
A trained eye can immediately spot that the selvedges are not parallel to the seams but I guess you live and learn. Used an existing cushion cover as a guide to stitch a zipper on the back. Easily done.
Preparing for a pillow swap at the quilt guild. A quick look:
Finally completed my FMQ quilt. It's the smallest quilt I have made and the meandering quilting pattern went pretty quickly. It's definitely not perfect but I am a lot more confident now that I can dabble with FMQ. Few observations, the smaller the pattern the stiffer the quilt, something I had not noticed before with straight line quilting. The FMQ is a lot more dense and the quilt has a different feel to it. I need to get better at this and shall definitely keep working at it.
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