The Less Glamorous Side of Quilting

After the thrill of designing a new piece is gone you’re left with the more mundane tasks of quilting and edge finishing. I know some people stitch together two or three chunks of fabric and then revel in quilting them, but that’s not me. I enjoy the texture quilting adds to a piece, but usually I don’t go out of my way to do difficult quilting. Two recent finishes are perfect examples of my lax attitude.

For “Cobalt” I quilting curved vertical lines and then accentuated some of them with a Posca marker. Probably I could have couched yarn for a similar effect, but the marker was much easier.

For “Corrugated” I used the serpentine stitch on my portable Pfaff to echo the wiggly lines in the fabric. I learned the Integrated Dual Feed doesn’t do as good a job as the walking foot on my Janome, but that machine is in the shop. Despite lots of ironing and pinning, the foot kept pushing the fabric forward. I need to block this one to eliminate the wonkiness.

“Corrugated” detail

For both quilts I sewed on narrow single fold bindings for a pop of color at the edges, although mostly I face my edges. Again, I find facings easier than bindings.

To continue with my corner cutting theme, I also took short cuts with the two latest fabric bowls I made. Instead of satin stitching over the seams or disguising the seams, I used fabric strips over the seams as decorative elements. I fused on more decorative bits and edges, and called them done.

The inner and outer fabrics are reversed, so the Paula Nadelstern fabric inside the bowl on the left is outside the bowl on the right.

At the rate I’m going, in 2 or 3 years I will simply glue everything together, and know it will last my lifetime.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Friday.