I was planning on catch you all up on my summer travel but I’ve been in the mood to share some crafting and quilting related posts (oh yeah my blog is called “tierneycreates” so I have to pretend…).
In the middle of August I got together again with my quilting buddies J and D to help D complete her first quilt – a lap-sized truck themed quilt for her 1 year old grandson.
Wow – I’ve been quilting for 25 years and I forgot the learning curve with learning how to make quilts. There are a lot of steps to learn!
If you are just joining us and want to see the other related posts here 4 previous posts in order:
Taking a New Quilter on Her First “Shop Hop”
Quilter Playdate and Learning to Rotary Cut
Quilter Playdate: Learning to Piece
Quilter Playdate: Laying Out the Quilt and New Shelves
When we met for the 5th time in the middle of August we covered some major activities:
- Measuring for and putting together the quilt backing
- Measuring for and cutting the quilt’s binding
- Creating the quilt binding
- Preparing the quilt top for longarm quilting
- How quilts are quilted via a longarm machine (so help a quilter understand why their are specific requirements to prepare a quilt for longarm quilting).
On her own D finished sewing her blocks together (which she began during our session shared in the post Quilter Playdate: Learning to Piece.
(It was fun to see the fabric that J and I helped her select during our Quilt Shop Hop in June become a quilt!)
It was time to measure the quilt in order to piece the back to the correct length and width:
After that was figured out, D pieced the yardage for the backing together, reserving some of the backing yardage for the binding. J then taught her how to cut strips for and then piece together the binding strips:
Sometimes I wonder how on earth did I originally learn what I can now do in my sleep after 25 years of making quilt bindings?
J had her do a 1/8″ stitch around the edge of the entire quilt to protect from block edges separating during longarming:
Then J, who is a professional longarmer, treated us to a “behind the scenes” of how a longarm machine is loaded, programmed (for pre-program stitch patterns), and monitored. Wow it’s a lot of work!
It is pretty physical – we saw J climb under her machine and check adjustments, etc. but first we were fascinated with how the quilt top is zippered onto the machine:
And all the physical work of aligning the quilt top and quilt backing; and adjusting:
J and D had selected a truck quilting pattern for the truck themed quilt! It was fascinating to see how the computerized longarm machine “read” the pattern and progressed with stitching it onto the quilt!
We peeked under the machine frame to see the underside of the stitching on the quilt back – the pattern really shows on the solid color of the backing:
(Watching the entire setting up a quilt to be longarm machine quilted really help me understand why longarm quilters request that your backing is at least 4 inches (some request more) beyond the size of your quilt top.)
At our next together I will see the completed quilt – and see the conclusion to the journey that J (who did most the teaching) and I went on with D! Then the 3 of us will decide what project is next and we might work on the same quilt (or maybe a bag) together during our future Quilter Playdates 🙂
tierneycreates 