When I was at the Caring Hearts Community Quilting Group on Thursday, one of the ladies there made the above statement.
I have been working on turning the scrap blocks I was given at CHCQG into a quilt top.
They were all different sizes so I found the smallest of them and cut them all square to the same size (9 1/2 inches). In retrospect, maybe I should have quilted them first but I don't seem to have done too much damage!
I have been quilting in the ditch - I'm getting much better with all the practise; I've even reached medium speed on the machine now!
I don't know who put these blocks together but many of them are not well made. Some of them had more fabric in the strip than had actually been stitched down so rather than quilt in the ditch, I sewed a line of topstitching to hold the loose fabric down.
The way they have been constructed means that often the dark colour seam allowance shows through the light colour strip. In some cases I was able to access the seam and cut the darker fabric back but in most cases, because they have been sewn onto a foundation, that was not possible.
I have been working on turning the scrap blocks I was given at CHCQG into a quilt top.
They were all different sizes so I found the smallest of them and cut them all square to the same size (9 1/2 inches). In retrospect, maybe I should have quilted them first but I don't seem to have done too much damage!I have been quilting in the ditch - I'm getting much better with all the practise; I've even reached medium speed on the machine now!
I don't know who put these blocks together but many of them are not well made. Some of them had more fabric in the strip than had actually been stitched down so rather than quilt in the ditch, I sewed a line of topstitching to hold the loose fabric down.The way they have been constructed means that often the dark colour seam allowance shows through the light colour strip. In some cases I was able to access the seam and cut the darker fabric back but in most cases, because they have been sewn onto a foundation, that was not possible.
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| look carefully between the leaf on the top left and the blue flower - you can see the edge of the black fabric |
In my own work (all three quilts), I have gone for minimalist quilting. I have seen many quilts in the past couple of weeks that have been closely quilted with straight parallel lines and I have fallen for that look so I decided to try it out on a couple of the pre-sewn string blocks. I discovered something along the way: if I quilt where the dark line of fabric can be seen, it can be disguised.
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| While not actually gone, the dark edge has been disguised! |
I'm having way too much fun!
Great job on the quilting. It's interesting to see how others do their work isn't it?
ReplyDeleteYou are learning and practicing excellent strategies! Very good!
ReplyDeleteYou're getting so good!! It's really unfortunate about the dark fabric. I always press my seams outwards but in that case I might press to the light side (even though in some cases, you can't in these blocks). Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteSounds like the perfect amount of fun to me.
ReplyDeletei really like the straight lines look of quilts. Partly because that's all I can do so far (haven't tried in the ditch yet).
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