Who Doesn't Love a Jelly Sandwich?
Cleo inspects the sandwiching process for accuracy.
I know, I know, it’s been awhile. No excuses, really, although I am back at work a few days a week (yay!) and we spent a few weeks at the cottage when it was brutally hot in our part of the world (double yay!).
Here’s a quick update on the demonstration quilt. I got a chance to work on it in the cool surroundings of the cottage porch (lovely!) and there were three things that I accomplished:
1) Piecing together the backing. My quilt top measures approximately 48” by 64”. If I wanted to, I could make it bigger by adding borders and sashing, but I chose not to, so the dimensions are what they are. That said, I needed to create a backing for the quilt to suit the size.
Most backings are pretty simple and I chose a white on white fabric. But of course, fabric generally comes in two widths: 45” or 60” (you can occasionally find much wider, but not in cottage country). This meant I needed to piece two cuts of 60” fabric together to make it fit, centring the seam so it looks all neat and tidy. A word of warning: aim to have at least an additional 4” of fabric on all sides to allow for any miscalculations. Yes, they happen.
My cottage workspace.
2) Sandwiching the quilt top, batting and backing. This sounds pretty straightforward - and it is! Simply layer the backing, batting and quilt top together. You want them to lie together smooth and square. And as I already mentioned, include some overage of the batting and backing of about 4” on all sides.
For batting, you’ve got a lot to choose from in terms of widths, thicknesses and composition. I never want to piece the batting, so I needed to find something that would suit the width of my quilt. I also prefer polyester batting over cotton (it’s lighter), plus I generally go for something that isn’t too thick - it makes it easier for when I get down to the actual quilting process.
Now - and this is a very important part of the sandwiching process - you need to pin all the sandwich layers together. You need a LOT of large-ish safety pins for this and you need to keep the layers taught and smooth. I shift everything to the floor for this step. And as always, my feline helpers get right in there. Ultimately, I want to have a safety pin through all three layers every 6 inches or so. This takes time, but it will be worth it.
Once everything is pinned together, we are ready to do the actual quilting. I’ll save that for another blog post, but I did want to note one other thing I accomplished at the cottage…
3) Preparing the fabric binding. Once all three layers are quilted together, I will finish off the edges of the quilt with a fabric binding. There are a few ways to make the binding, but I generally steer toward the easy option. I had several white on white jelly roll strips leftover from a quilt top project I did this past winter. And since quilters never throw anything away, I had the perfect binding solution. First, I chain-stitched each strip end to end. By chain-stitching, I mean that I didn’t stop and re-start my sewing machine with every piece; I did one continuous stitch by looping back the ends and then snipping the loops apart once I ran out of fabric strips. Such a time-saver! I had measured the perimeter of my quilt ahead of time and added about 6” per corner to ensure that I would have sufficient binding. The result? One very long 2-1/2” wide strip of fabric ready to turn into binding. More on that later…
Just a few more steps before the masterpiece is complete; we just need a few rainy days to “git ‘er done”!
If you don’t already subscribe to my blog, please sign up at the bottom of my webpage. That way, you’ll be notified when I post the finished product!