Boy isn't it a lovely day! I can remember many years ago, now I'm going to tell my age here, when we first started seeing polyester double knit fabric. Well we thought this was the best thing since zippers or maybe even the best thing since buttons. You didn't have to iron it after it was washed and dried! Oh my wasn't this a time saver and it gave us more time to do other things, like sew! Everyone loved it! Today the most amazing thing about this fabric is that it never wears out!!! I mean never! It is also very heavy!
Well believe it or not I had a customer call me about quilting a top for her and I don't even remember where she said the top came from, but it was not something that she had made. She wasn't even born I don't think, when they were making this stuff! You guessed it the top was entirely double knit polyester!
If you have never worked with this material, it is very stretch-------stretch-----------stretchie! Extremely hard to quilt is the translation of that sentence! But like Larry the Cable Guy, I "got 'er done". I don't think Larry would have anything bad to say about the finished product either. A lot of our older generation made quilts that were designed for a regular full size bed and the quilt was not the spread and they did not allow very much drop off of the sides of the mattress. Many of the older quilts will just cover the top of the mattress with no drop down the sides at all! This can make it difficult to use them as a regular part of the bed linen unless they are on a bed that is being slept in by one person only. If more than one then you will hear the accussations of "cover hog" flying about frequently.
At any rate I got this quilt and got it quilted. Here it is!
You can tell in this picture that the person who made this handsewn quilt loved the 9 patch block because that is what it is! All 9 patches sewn together without sashing or borders!
The person who brought me this quilt had picked out the backing and binding and I think she did a wonderful job. All of the melon colors were just beautiful and the backing really brought out the color in the scraps. As you can likely tell I just did a meandering quilting technique all over the top. Sometimes that is just the best quilting pattern to keep it from looking too fussy or busy.
Now I love the binding and just wasn't able to get a good picture of it from the top. Sorry I'm not better at photographing my projects. The binding really made those colors pop out on the top!
I really enjoyed doing this very stretchy quilt! It did turn out lovely. I will give you a hint if you start to quilt a quilt top that has some stretchiness be sure to lay it out and quilt down the outside first! This will help you manage all that in-between stuff and you can ease and stretch as you go to make things turn our properly! They may never be perfect, but then neither am I.
Remember quilting is a very fun thing to do! If it stresses you to the max then lets figure out why and see if we can turn this into something that is fun and relaxing. I have found if something just really causes me to be anxious that I will do less and perhaps never even finish the project. I need to stop and figure out why I am so very anxious and see if there is a way to de-stress it!! Sometimes it's just one part that gives me trouble and if I can work through that the rest does fine. Are you having a problem with a quilting project? If the answer is yes, try to figure out which aspect is giving you the most problems and if you want my input just let me know. I'm always happy to help a fellow quilter!
Ya'll have a great day. Happy quilting.
No comments:
Post a Comment