Wednesday, March 28, 2012

TURNING A TOP INTO A QUILT

I finally got around to finishing the back for my Connecticut Winter Quilt and last Saturday I pinned the three layers together.  As per my usual method, I clear out the tables and stuff from the studio, clean the floor and tape the back taunt to the floor, spread out the batting and smooth down the top then start putting safety pins all over 2-3" apart to hold all three layers together:


Bentley helped
sorta....



















I've been putting off starting the quilting because I haven't made up my mind how to quilt it.  I always get stuck here.  The problem is the quilt is big, which makes it difficult  to get through the machine.  I was thinking about doing a 'fan' pattern.  I've done that before on another quilt that was all squares and it really turned out nice.  It's a lot of marking the quilt, stopping and tying off, and making sure the pattern stays square with the quilt.  I decided against it because the quilt is just so darn big.  Which leaves me limited to easy patterns using the walking foot.  So that's what I did - I took the easy way out...because it's just a quilt for using, it's not a show winner.

I just followed the outside line of the 'fiddlestick' in each block, making it up where it was going the other direction.  

This is pretty easy since you can go from side to side.  Once I got one direction done I turned it and started in the other direction.


close-up of the quilting on the back on my hand-dyed fabric

a bigger section of the back

I should have it all quilted by tomorrow, then I'll start on the binding.  


No comments:

Post a Comment