Quilted pouches

I've been taking a little blogging holiday this summer, apparently. So here's a little post just to get back into the habit, some new quilted pouches that are making their way into my shop today... The colours of some of them didn't come out quite right in the photographs so I'm fussing with them, but the first three are in there now.

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Wonky free motion quilting

This is my quilt folded, pretending it's finished

So as I was saying, we only had a handful of trick-or-treaters. Possibly Bradley's jack-o-lantern was too scary? I will have to alert him to this issue.

But now, onto the quilting. I finished my second quilt top a long time ago, the Denyse Schimdt Single Girl, but since basting it together, it has languished around being a big disappointment. This is because I made a few choices for it that I later regretted.

This is the hand-quilted part

First of all I used muslin for the background, and once it was finished it suddenly seemed a bit drab to me and I wasn't crazy about it. I had considered a white cotton initially but it seemed too bright next to some of the vintage prints. So there's that.

Then I also decided to experiment and used curtain interlining for the batting. It's sort of soft and fuzzy and thinner than the other batting I've used so I thought it would be easier to do nice fine hand-quilting. Plus it was an inexpensive option. But once it was all pin-basted together the lining seemed to make the whole quilt sort of heavy and droopy. So there's that.

Then I decided that I would hand quilt it. As I expected with the thin "batting" I could do nice tiny stitches. I used the circle design suggested by the pattern. But once I had finished three rows I wasn't thrilled. It just didn't seem quilted enough, there were large areas that I felt would need lots more quilting. Which would take ages. Especially as I wasn't motivated to finish it since I didn't love my quilt anymore.

So enough complaining, because.. I've sorted it all out! I decided that I would cut my losses and switch to machine quilting. I decided on free-motion quilting because I have a darning foot already for my Bernina, and I don't have a walking foot yet. Plus I wanted to try free-motion. And I love it! I love the way it looks, I love the way it feels and I like the muslin now. Even the interlining seems right now, it's a thin quilt (which was the original plan, I like thin quilts) but with a nice textured feel. And it's so pretty!

Detail of the machine quilting

I did a very simple scribbled loop pattern, just the same loop over and over, one column at a time. It seemed like an easy way to start and I like the design. There are lots of mistakes but you'd really have to examine the quilt to spot them, so I just don't care. Which isn't like me at all. I may do more hand quilting someday, but somehow for this quilt, machine quilting has been the answer. It does mean I will have to undo lots of hand quilting.. yuck.. but I really think it's worth it.

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Single girl assembled

a glimpse of our new backyard

The "single girl" quilt is now assembled. It turns out I had only bought enough batting and backing fabric for the twin size so I couldn't make it larger after all.I finished the piecing last week, then sewed together the back panel which is orange floral My Folklore fabric. Before assembling you can use the template provided in the pattern to mark the hand quilting lines. I liked the way the circles look so I did use the pattern.

Here's a picture that shows the hand quilting:

I marked the lines on with a 2B pencil

I've done the bottom row of the quilt so far. It's a twin so it shouldn't take too long, except insofar as it always takes too long to finish hand quilting a quilt. I'm already thinking about my next quilt so I have to try to stay motivated to finish this one.

I basted with safety pins this time, much quicker!

A detail of the hand quilting stitches

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Quilt "finishing"

The update on my quilt is that I've finally finished hand quilting the entire thing, but now I'm planning to add double the number of rows. There are diagonal lines of stitching through each full square, but I'm going to add extra rows so that each full square has an "X" in it.

In the meantime I decided to bind the edges so that while I'm working on it there's no risk of the quilt top pulling apart at the seams. Also it's satisfying to see it looking more finished.
So I have a tip for a binding without bias tape or anything else. I'm not sure how to reference this, but basically I just saw some quilters on tv doing this on their historical quilts. The only difference is that their quilts were much loftier, and their borders were bigger.

This is the view of the underside - there's no seam!

So what you do is use the bottom panel of fabric for the binding. Fold it up and over the top and hem it in place with mitred corners. Mine is about 3/8" wide. I decided to stitch it in place by hand as I knew I would never be happy with a machine-sewn finish and besides I had already gone to the trouble of hand quilting. I knew it might pucker or something and I'd just spend more time picking it out.

Of course you only need to stitch the top side, I used an invisible stitch.

Here's a close-up of one of the mitred corners:While I was trying to figure out how to hand quilt I found this helpful tutorial on youtube. I love that people take the time to make these movies to explain things.

And while I was at youtube I found these wonderful vintage Singer commercials: She Caught on Quick, Three Smart Daughters and this one from 1956-8. My favourite line: "Of course I want a Singer, who doesn't?"

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