"Crème Berry" (no.15)

 I am not doing any favours for my 13th quilt. I have since completed another quilt in its place. Yes this is my 15th quilt. I had recently gone to a fabric store about 40 minutes from my house on the way to Melbourne and I bought this layer cake along with another. "Ville Fleurie" by French General for Moda. I was inspired by the colours when I returned home and began designing for it. I have always liked the idea of having the colour and pattern in one corner of the design and keep the rest in a white or cream fabric. So I made this chevron pattern using the moda collection and a cream and white fabric in-between to create that theme.

I created the squares and that was a fairly relaxing process. Seeing as the design was to split the squares in half diagonally it was simple to sew two seams and them cut between the
sewing lines.
One tool I have found amazing is the "Frixtion" pens by Pilot. I found this out somewhere, for the life of me I cannot remember (Either Youtube or Pinterest) but I used this to mark the middle of my fabric for when I would cut it later. The awesomeness of this is that when you iron the seams flat the heat will erase the pen mark! The picture above shows the mark with and without heat. When I did this I was astounded! I have never liked using chalk on my fabrics because I just couldn't get the mark completely off. This is a saviour for me, to the point I have to buy specific ones just for fabric as I regularly use them for writing.
I then laid out the pattern on the ground and with the colours I decided to make it a gradient design with the grey colours at the top, then red in the middle and purple at the bottom. I really liked the look of it and with the white fabric as a base the colours stood out.
Thor did an excellent job once again to match seams with the added insurance of pins. This quilt was a very relaxing process. It is a smaller quilt than no.14 "White Diamonds" (Check out previous posts) so it's mainly a lap quilt for cold winter nights.

I used Craft Smart spray adhesive to assemble the quilt and I'll need to purchase another as this one seems to be running out. I don't know that it is the best type of adhesive spray as it seems to leave drops of glue while being sprayed. Might be the way I tilt the can. It still did the job and the droplet marks have disappeared so it's not all that bad. 

Quilting was a little more time consuming. Though it is a small quilt I wanted to keep the same chevron pattern on the back as is shown on the front. I didn't attach any borders to this quilt as I didn't want to destroy the illusion of the design. So even though there was no border to quilt the pattern required a lot of stop and start. 
I quilted along the horizontal lines firstly, beginning in the middle and working my way out. I then rolled the quilt diagonally and quilted the diagonal chevron pattern, again starting in the middle and working out. I did quilt in the ditch where the patchwork was and then continued the quilting over the plain white squares in the top left corner. I had no problem with puckering - and as you are probably sick of me talking about my machine I'll restrain myself, but I still cannot get over how much better my quilts are using Thor. 
For binding I used some fabric from much stash, cut, joined and ironed to make it into a binding strip. The fabric is a cream colour similar to the cream in the backing and parts of the feature fabrics with a red almost paisley shape design over top. The red looks a little like coloured pencil strokes creating the same shape as paisley but without the inside decor between the lines. I've had this fabric for years and have used it for a lot of small things like broaches and hair clips. I hope to use the remainder of it in a quilt or something else but I really liked how this joined the backing fabric I picked with the front of the quilt. 
Hand sewing was pretty quick - only a few hours as opposed to several. I was watching "The Community" Season 3 while sewing the binding on. Music while making the quilt - Richard Marx Greatest Hits, FTIsland's "Treasure Box", The Corrs, Michael Jackson's Collection, Mika - there were a few others but I can't remember. I do tend to listen to the same stuff because my collection is not very big, but I'm glad I don't get sick of the same music all the time.

The last couple of photos are the final product, one has my feet in it. In that one you can really see the quilt design. I love the chevron pattern simply because the shapes just fit together so well. It's the same with hexagons and triangles, complicated shapes that look like they wouldn't fit but just do. 

This quilt I felt was just relaxing. It felt a little like I had come back to a place of joy in my work. Nothing went wrong in this project. Nothing really annoyed me. I didn't need to redo any part of it which was so wonderful. This was just a small, inspired and joyful project for me and I think it'll be hard to let this one go, but I do hope it will be sold. It is called "Crème Berry" - naming rights go to my mum, she's very good with names. I think it suits it very well.

Let me know you're thoughts. Come visit me on Instagram for ongoing updates on my quilting. (Link Below) I post about a lot of other things too, so everyone is welcome. 
Sew Happy.

Miss Mae.

https://www.instagram.com/miss.mae90/

Binding - my tips - plus finishing "White Diamonds" no.14

Binding! This is actually one of my favourite parts of making a quilt. I used to hate it. Reasons being that it was the longest process to make binding and I had to make it because I could never find pre-made binding that worked with my colour choices. Once there was a massive sale at Lincraft and they sold pre-made binding. I bought so much of it simply because they were the closest I was going to get to match my fabrics. I still have some left but since purchasing a binding maker I am more inclined to make my own. This way I can match my fabrics perfectly and keep that 100% created by me reputation I like to uphold. Anyway I would like to share my tricks to making my binding clean and perfect. And by perfect I mean I've never had to redo any part of my binding.
The first tip is new because I can now use a double needle. In the top image you can see I have a double needle sewing the binding. Now it is hard to tell but when making binding using the small gadget (see in previous posts) you make two flaps which result in a crease in the fabric. On previous binding using a normal needle I would sometimes sew off the crease and when I folded the binding around I found these little creases showing on the side. They are awfully hard to iron out and mostly it doesn't help. Now if you use a different method to making binding - such as just folding the strips in half, sewing the raw edges on the edges of the quilt and then fold around - you won't have this problem. However if you have one of the gadgets to make binding like the type I make, this double needle tip is great for minimising those creases. All you need to do is keep the folded crease in-between the two needles and you will never have those crease issues again. That was a very long explanation but believe me - this idea has changed my life!
So what I really want to show you is how I join the end of the binding together in a clean and inconspicuous way. This part annoyed me the most. I tried a few different ways and was never really satisfied with the result. I believe I worked this out on my own when making a portfolio for a client a few years ago and I believe it is the best way to make the finish nice and durable.
So I start sewing my binding usually on the side of the quilt in the middle and I leave a bit of binding unstitched, like a tail. Once I go all the way around the quilt and come back to the side I started on, I sew down to a point where I am close to the other tail but still leaving a large gap.

Next I lay the quilt flat on a table and measure the binding against the quilt to see how much I need. I do this by pinching the two tails of fabric and checking that the quilt and the binding are both flat.

I then fold the binding upwards and downwards to make a small crease and then pin the binding together where they should meet. 

Next I fold the quilt away from the binding and sew the binding tails together at the crease and pin marking. Now on most occasions the binding widths don't always match but the beauty of binding is that there are no raw edges, so you can hide it. The only thing I would suggest is try and match the fold creases together rather than the edges of the fabric. 

 Check to see that the binding is flat against the quilt's edge and then trim the excess fabric. You can then pin it into place and then sew it down using your machine making sure the seam is sewn flat. 

Now you have a durable machine sewn closing of the binding. Now this example is not great close up mainly because this is a large pattern size fabric and it has words on it. However from a distance it is not noticeable and if you are using smaller size pattern fabrics it works a treat. When it comes to closing off edges like this I do prefer machine sewing as it feels more durable, plus it's so much quicker. 

 One more thing I want to share is how I hand sew my binding to my quilts. Slip stitching I find a bit hard. I do need to practice more but with my first quilt I slip stitched and well you can see all of it. I dislike it so much sometimes I feel like redoing it, but there are so many stitches it would be so much work (and I guess it shows how much my skills have grown). So because I hated seeing the stitches so much I changed the way I did it and I only have just now worked out what kind of stitch it is called. I ladder stitch my binding. Yes it took me about eight years to realise what I was actually doing. I like using this stitch though because I can do it securely, quickly and well enough that you would never know that it was stitched. I believe it gives a clean finished look to the quilt and I don't have to worry about thread being seen. While I was hand stitching no.14, I watched "The September Issue" as well as part of Season One of "The Community."
"The September Issue" is one of my favourite documentaries - you can see me watching it in the photo above - I really wanted to work in fashion when I was in high school and though I realised I didn't have the personality to be that competitive I really enjoy the process of designing, creating, producing and marketing products. I guess it is why I still do it, but in making quilts and other miscellaneous goods I don't feel so pressured because the community is so eager to learn. Yet even so I would like to promote and sell my products one day and this blog is part of it. So to all who are reading this, thank you. I really am astounded at all the different people who are reading my blog and it is really inspiring to share one of my passions with you.

In closing - I finished "White Diamonds" last night. The final product and the first finished quilt using my new Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2, more commonly known now as Thor. I'm sure he would be willing to bow if he could bend that way. So I am extremely proud of this one and though the white diamonds are not perfect I am so happy as it's a quilt pattern that I've wanted to do for some time and it has double needle stitched boarders, and I used fabric in my stash. I'm really happy if you couldn't tell. 

This is a long post! Sorry about that. I'll try and be less talkative. Eventually I won't have to explain my ways so much. But I am a teacher, it's part of my job. I hope it all made sense and that you try these methods out. If you have any tips to share, you are welcome to comment below - I'd love to hear the methods you use as I love learning new things. 

Thank you so much for reading. Sew happy.

Miss Mae

Name revealed - no.14

Number 14 has now been bestowed with a name. Yes, I am excited by this because I usually have trouble giving names to my quilts but with the look of it, this one was obvious. But I'm not going to tell you until the end.

So continuing with day two and three, and would you believe it? This quilt got bigger than I expected. I am so into double borders lately but I forget how many inches it adds to the quilt. This required expanding my backing by joining two pieces together and the stripes made it super easy to disguise the seam. I normally use really small patterns for backing but this one the large stripes still worked. I basically matched the two brown stripes and sewed in the middle of the stripe so it looks the same width as the other stripes in the pattern.
I then ironed both front and back and laid them on my lounge floor. Using my pool noodle and quilting spray glue I assembled the quilt. I love this method because I don't have a large table but I can still prevent any puckering.
So in purchasing the fabric for the borders, I also finally bought some quilting safety pins. I have been using large quilting pins to hold my quilt together since I started quilting and I would always get stabbed. Quilting always turned out to be a painful experience, until now. Yes not a single gasp while quilting this one. I am surprised it took me so long to get them.
(Though I had no idea they existed for a while)

For the quilting I used a normal straight stitch and followed a diagonal pattern across the squares skipping the small white squares. I used a blue gradient cotton thread on top and a brown gradient thread on the bottom. The reason behind the choice was that I simply wanted the top thread to stand out and have the bottom thread more muted. Quilting the front panel wasn't all that difficult or long. The extra room on Thor made it far more comfortable than on my old machine. Thor is an amazing machine. It sorts out any potential puckering or problems with ease and I feel that I don't have to put in as much effort to match seams, press fabric flat or anything. It really has simplified the process of making a quilt for me which makes me so happy. You can see my little finger in one of the photos here. It's healing fine but slowly. I'm hoping it'll get better soon.

Now for quilting the border, I am finally going to return to the double needle quilting. My old Pfaff machine could not handle this procedure no matter how many times I tried. They were tension issues mostly so I just gave up on it and quilted in other ways. But now I have Thor which has settings for this specific process. So I gave it a try, with a trial of course, I wasn't about the go straight in on my pretty much perfect (no mistakes yet) quilt. I tried and it worked! I have been waiting to do this for so long. It was one of my lessons when I first learnt how to make quilts. "Quilt it properly" is what I was told. Plus it gives it such a lovely texture and I really miss having that. It is also something I can do myself. One day I might explore having my quilts quilted elsewhere with something fancy but currently I like having my quilts completely made by me. I used a 2.5 millimetre wide double needle and a combination of Polyester and Cotton thread. I wish I hadn't used Polyester because now it might melt under an iron. I don't know that I'll need to iron it but I might iron the quilt with the back facing up to prevent that from happening. I know now for next time. Use cotton thread! All the time!
So anyway the double stitching was so quick I could not believe it. I stitched seven rows on each brown boarder and again there was no puckering and only one problem with the tension. I think Thor needed a rest, but he's very good at letting me know that there is something wrong.
Music I was listening to was a bunch of Hanson EPs as well as Lifehouse "No Name Face", Jewel "Spirit", Tracy Chapman "Collection" and The Corrs "In Blue". I was in a lighter mood while doing this and I really enjoy singing these songs.

This is how the quilting looks on the back of the quilt. It's really nice I think. I barely had to redo any of the stitching which shows how wonderful my machine is. I left the white border completely clean as I think it would have destroyed the effect. The same goes for the small squares on the front. I did test out quilting around the white squares and though it look great on the back, It looked horrible on the front. It drew a lot of attention to it and I really didn't like it. I decided to unpick it and leave it alone because the seams on those areas are not perfect and it just looked bad. Trust me on this.
I am going to leave the binding off this post as I would like to do a tutorial on how I match the two ends cleanly. I cannot remember if I saw it somewhere or if I worked it out myself. But however I learnt it I would like to share it. So the final picture without the boarder is below, let me know your thoughts.
Time for the name of this quilt...

"White Diamonds"

I feel that it is quite obvious as when you look at it there are white diamonds all over it. I don't know why I have trouble with names. I guess cause it's a bit final and I want something that will suit. So that's the name. Let me know what you think.
Tune in for my next post which will be a tutorial on binding.
Thanks for reading.

Miss Mae