Quilt in use :)

This past weekend, I went to CA to hand deliver the quilt to my buddy. He took a few pictures that I thought I would throw in so you can see what the quilt looks like with an adorable little baby in it! :-)

Day 26

I stopped by The Quilt Shoppe to show the quilt to all the ladies and to buy some more thread. The ladies all LOVED the quilt, which completely made my day! :-) I spoke with Sally, a friend and experienced quilter, and she suggested using invisible/clear thread and sewing it in the ditch for the quilting part so it's not noticeable. This is a great idea, however I was concerned, because I read several places that I should use cotton or embroidery thread to keep it from cutting through the cotton fabric with extensive use and washes. With this suggestion in mind, options were discussed with the ladies at the quilt store as well, and they suggested either using ties (which I didn't think would look too good on this quilt) or making small stitches in the ditch, using the same color as the fabric - or clear thread. The difficulty is that there are 2 sides to the quilt, and the patterns are different on each, so making creative quilting lines around the colored strips on the play side, would mean that the black GT photo on the other side, would have strange lines running through it and could ruin the photo image.

I decided to get a few colors that matched the charcoal (faded black), light blues, and browns on the black GT photo, and then picked up red, green, and blue for the background and to match the strips. I will be making a number of 1" lines using straight stitches in the seams whenever I can, with matching thread, so that the layers and batting are securely held together all over the quilt, but it is not noticeable unless you look closely.

I took the pinned side, and rearranged the pins to where the 1" stitching would be.

Then, I swapped the white bobbin for blue thread, and put blue thread in the top as well.

The first one I did, I put right up on the edge.

You can see it up close if you look for it, but even a foot away, it's hard to see.

I found that the opposite side was not the same, and could be off by as much as 1/2"! Therefore, I had to be careful not to get any on the red of the other side. I did this once, requiring me to cut off that thread and sew it about 1/4" away from the seam. The color thread matched quite well with the background, so even though it was not on a seam, it was still very difficult to see.

Once the blue top and blue bottom parts were done, I kept the bobbin blue and put the white bobbin from earlier at the top to use as top thread. Then I sewed a 1" strip of white. The bottom should still be blue.

The top (white) part looked okay.

The white thread pulled through to the opposite side of the quilt, and that did NOT look good!! :-(

Good ol' seam ripper... I removed that and decided to use the lighter blue thread I had as top thread, and try to move the areas that needed to be sewn to the blue strips.

Here is a close up of one of the blue strips after changing threads and sewing.

Because the black GT took up a lot of space and was curvy, this didn't work in all places. There was one place in the middle of the quilt, where I switched to the light blue to match part of the black GT fabric, and because it was still blue, the 2 shades looked okay on both sides of the quilt.

When I finished sewing, I ironed both sides of the quilt and got rid of the fuzzes. One thing that I found, was that the fabric couldn't be laid flat due to the embroidery.

When I finished sewing, I took these pictures. The 1" sewn strips are about 8" apart throughout the quilt, but you can see that when you hold it back - even just 1-2 feet away - you cannot see the stitching at all.

Once that was done, I ironed both sides of the quilt, got rid of the fuzzes, and folded it up. It's now ready to take a trip to CA and be introduced to the little one. :-)

For those of you who stuck with me until the end, thanks for reading this blog! I’m sad to see the quilt go, but happy it is going to such a special little guy (with a great Daddy). Stay tuned for the next project. :-)

Day 25

Tonight I put the quilt sandwich together. The people I talked to said to use just one layer of the thin batting if I plan to use the machine to sew it together. I think the baby will like 2 layers as it will feel softer and fluffier. So... I moved the foot rest and coffee table over, laid out the white batting, flattened out the wrinkles, and laid the quilt on top.

Then, I cut the batting to fit the shape of the quilt.

I left about 1/4" extra around all sides to make sure I wouldn't end up short.

To make sure the quilt was flat without wrinkles, I started in the middle, and used the ruler to push the material to the end. I noticed that the bunching of the fabric by the embroidery shortened the width of the quilt by about an inch on each side!

Then I took the rest of the batting, laid it on the floor, carefully picked up the 2 layers I was previously working on, and cut a second layer out. I had used a twin sized batting package, which was just enough for 2 thin layers.

Then I took my push pins and pinned the 3 layers together. I used 100 pins, and spaced them about 3-4" apart. This would keep the layers in place as the quilt was sewn together.

From everything I read, at this point, I am supposed to start in the middle of the quilt and sew, or "quilt" to the outside. Then, once the quilt has been "quilted", add binding to the edge and sew the layers together around the edges. There are a few reasons why I decided not to do it this way. (1) I didn't want to lose the fluffiness with the quilting (though I will add sewing once it's put together). (2) The 2 sides were not exactly the same length due to the bunching of the fabric from the applique pieces and embroidery. It would look odd if I got to the end and had to add extra red to part of the outer border. (3) I already had the border in place and did not think adding additional binding would look good.

So... I called up my buddy John, who knows nothing about quilting (but has sewn more than me), to discuss the situation. When he mentioned flipping it inside out, I thought about it, pictured it, and knew it would work! :-)

In order to do this, I would put the 2 batting layers on the bottom, then put the back of the quilt face up on top of the batting, and then put the front of the quilt face down (same direction as the other side) on top of that. Then, I would sew 1/4" around all edges, leaving about 1-2 ft of space in the bottom, turn it inside out through that opening, and then hand sew an invisible blind hem stitch on the bottom. I had no clue if this would work, but since it worked in my head, I decided to go for it!

The first thing to do was to get safety pins to replace the push pins. I foresaw disaster trying to turn the quilt full of push pins inside out. I could sew basting stitches throughout the quilt, but decided it was easier and just as effective to use safety pins. So, I went to Wal-Mart and picked up 4 boxes of 30 basting sized pins.

Here is what the front looked like with 120 safety pins.

And here is what the back looked like:

Then, I put the the top layer on face down, and pinned the four sides using the push pins. I put 2 pins together at both ends of the part that needed to remain open as a way to remind me not to sew there.

Then I sewed the 4 layers together. The sewing machine had no problem whatsoever! The only thing that was a little bit of a problem was making sure that I had all 4 layers under the needle - a few times I had to go back and sew a layer of the batting that didn't make it the first time around.

The bottom stitching was white.

And the top stitching was red, to match the border (even though the stitches would not be seen).

I used the last of the white thread to refill the bobbin.

And when the sewing was done, I pushed everything threw that 1 1/2 ft hole, taking care not to rip the seams that I had just sewed.

It turned out great!

And this is what the corners looked like. I should have put my arm through the opening and pushed out the corners all the way, but I did not think of this until after closing the opening.

Here is the quilt with the hole in the bottom.

Some of the frayed edges came through when I sewed, so I had to cut these off.

Then, I ironed the seams down on all 4 corners. It felt so different ironing 4 layers, instead of just one. :-)

Next, I folded under a 1/4" seam from both sides of the opening, and held it together with pins.

Then I threaded a needle with red thread, tied a knot at the end, and took a deep breath. The last time I tried this was disastrous!

I started with stitches that were very close together, but they showed through quite a bit. After about 4" of that, I decided to use the seam ripper and start over with it.

This time, I tried to catch just a small amount of fabric from the top and bottom, and even though it showed through and the stitches were not as close together, it looked much nicer.

When done, I pressed that part of the seam together and you can hardly see the stitches! :-)

This is a side view.

The quilt is now sewn together. The only thing left to do now is the quilting. Did I mention how soft it is?:-)

Day 24

For those of you following my blog, I just wanted to say thanks for reading! With this project just about finished, I wanted to mention that the next project (which is going to be WAY cool) will not start until after I get a new job. I had an interview yesterday, so wish me luck! :-)

On a similar note, if you want to follow future projects without having to constantly log in to see if there's been an update, you have the option to receive new posts by email. I've done that with other blogs, and it works great! To do this, simply click on the link to the left under "Email Updates" that says "Subscribe to Piccola's Projects by Email". I put this link here specifically for this purpose as it not only notifies you that there is a new post, but actually puts the post (with the pictures) in the email.

And now...back to the project. :-) I went to Metro Embroidery to pick up the quilt. The quality far exceeded what I was expecting. It is a thick, rich red color, done exactly the way I asked them to do it. I would HIGHLY recommend using them if anyone in WPB needs to have something embroidered!! Here is what it looks like with the embroidery (these are the 2 that worked on the quilt):

And a close up of the embroidery. You can see a very tight satin stitch was used. (If you want to see the stitching in more detail, you can double click on the image.)

Now that the embroidery is done, both sides of the quilt are completely finished! Here are both sides next to each other (the last time they will be apart):

The sunshine coming in the room makes the background look darker than it really is. Here is a picture of each side separately:

I already bought twin-sized batting to go inside the quilt, so the next step is to sew the layers together. This is what the batting looks like:

It is SOOOOOO soft!!!