Baby quilt... not two words I thought I'd be writing on my blog. Friends who I have known since school days (I finished senior in 1978!) are to be grandparents hopefully by the end of this month. The baby's parents are the indie band members from The Grates. They have a little café called Southside Tearooms conveniently up the road... and we meet up there often. I have yet to have a bad coffee there...
Anyway, the baby shower was yesterday and I had some gifts; a new one and three preloved ones that were a great hit 10 years ago... they asked for used things especially. I also decided to make a quilt out of a remnant piece of quilting cotton I bought a few months ago.... it is so soft and the pictures are so cute. So here's the not very well thought out part.... I bought some cotton batting from Trad's. I left it doubled up and then pinned the backing fabric, batting and the quilting cotton together. I sewed white thread on the dotted lines on the quilting cotton (still classed as quilting right? right??). Very simple.. if I had more time (i.e. more thought put into it) I would have like to sew around the trucks. After a row or stitching that was difficult to push through I changed the length of the stitch to 3mm and then it was much quicker.
I didn't think about binding it... I've never thought about quilting at all as I think the little pieces
would drive me crazy but I do appreciate the thought put into them and the time obviously. Thoughts however do not bind a quilt.
This was the selvage cut off the edge of the quilting fabric.. I used this to make some non bias binding and put it on the short edge. This was tricky as half of it was white and the other half was blue but cut roughly as I didn't know I was going to need it (the not well thought out part again) and so on some bits I only had about 2mm to sew down. I went slowly and did it.
The next part was the long edge. I didn't have enough fabric to cut binding (nor the time) but I decided to roll the extra width from the back to the front and make it self binded (new word/term?). As you can see above, it is also the selvage but had a nice rib pattern on it so a little different. This fabric was $2 per metre stretch cotton sateen from East Coast Fabrics from my stash. I really like it but realised it would probably be a bit much in a dress and now I have just enough for a straight skirt, I think.
The photo above shows the blue binding (the white stitching is deliberate and goes with the white stitching of the 'quilting'). It also shows how I didn't really think about how the corners get finished till too late so they are not mitred just raw!
This is the underside with more poorly executed corners, but the blue looks a nice contrast with the pink, green and yellow. All in all I am pretty happy with it. Patience was thrilled with it and at first didn't believe I had made it and asked to see the label as a joke, but I did put a label on the underside and showed her.. then she believed me.
When I was half way through making the quilt I also made a pavlova, my new go to dessert. I have always been a bit shy of making pavlovas but I found a great recipe and they work out perfectly every time. I'll put that in the next post.
Comments