Canadian Blogger eh!

March 9, 2016

Thankful for spring like weather in winter!

Category – Sewing

Crib size Quilt 38″ x 53″ made out of 100% cotton fabric panel, good quality flannel and Warm & Safe eco-friendly fire retardant batting.   Very easy to assemble – about one hour.

Beacon Tate

Canadian Blogger eh!

June 13 2015

I am thankful for the sunrise. Beautiful day on the west coast!

Category – Sewing

Tree Quilt

I decided I would like to make a queen size quilt for my son. I wanted to make something that would fit into his life right now. I searched the Internet for different quilt patterns, pictures, and ideas. I found a small quilt with a beach, water, sky and a tree.   My next decision was should I make the tree look as real as possible or go the other extreme and make it look like a cartoon.

I went to the fabric store and talked to a few people. I have never made a quilt this large before.   I had made kids quilts when my nieces, nephews and my children were younger. It seemed like people were buying the fabric with the scene already on it, this did not seem like much fun. I wanted to make something I created myself, not something that a cloth maker had produced. I was also told I could put it together and the fabric store knew a lady that would do the actual quilting.   I wanted the full experience; I wanted to do it myself.

Whenever I make something I think about it, sometimes for weeks, I work it out in my head. Once the thought process was done I headed on down to the fabric store.   That was an eye opener quilting is expensive!

I found it rather difficult working with such large amounts of fabric. Back to the fabric store, there must be tools available. There are things that look like those hoops you put on your pant leg when you are riding a bike so your pant leg does not get caught in the spokes of your bike tire. You roll the fabric up and clip it in these hoops, I got six and found a couple of those bike hoops at home. I was set. Notice the top is rolled up in those bicycle pant leg hoops.

I found it hard to push that much fabric around and it was heavy. You can actually buy quilting gloves with flexible fingertip grips; go figure – I had so much to learn. I always thought if there is a need someone probably thought of it already.

My sewing machine is a machine built for quilting but not one of those expensive ones; mine is one of the cheaper ones. One thing I realized is the distance from the arm to the needle makes a big difference when you have such a large amount of fabric. Oh, why did I cheap out on the sewing machine??

I was also told to quilt from the middle and work to the outer edge. Another question, how do you hold the 3 pieces together – the backing, batting, and top? No easy task.   Safety pins!

I placed the tree unto the fabric before I layered the batting and the back.  I pinned the leaves in place with straight pins and just started sewing them on.  Some of the leaves got displaced as I was sewing, I just picked them up and sewed them on.  I thought it turned out  good.

This is the queen size quilt on my dining room table. I did some machine stitching to add the effect of grass in green, yellow and gold. The back is the same fabric as the water. I love the fabric I used for the sky. I also quilted ten-inch rows across the fabric. It probably would have looked better with free stitch quilting – but I had never done that before and will need to practice. Another consideration was the tread – different colour on the front and back or the same??

Lessons Learned:

• Buy a sewing machine meant for quilting, if you plan to quilt large projects
• Check out the quilting shop for accessories (whatever your issue, there’s likely a solution):
  • Quilting clips
  • Quilting gloves
• Safety pins is one solution for holding the pieces together
• Quilt from the middle and work to the outer edge
• Your batting and back fabric should be about three inches on all sides bigger than the quilt front

Final thoughts

I had a lot of fun making this quilt. I think it would be beneficial to take a few lessons from a quilt shop, to learn quilting techniques that would make it easier.

Beacon Tate