Piped Binding Tutorial

There are tutorials available for piped binding that are stitched all on the machine (which you all know is against my religion!). Here's one I came across a while ago. It looks nice, and I don't even think it involves cording! The Ricky Tims Grand Finale DVD also gives a good method for doing a piped binding via machine. Both of these methods look nice on the front, but since my quilt is headed to some judged shows, I really wanted to have a finished product that has as clean a backside as it does the frontside. I dislike when bindings are machine stitched down because they almost never look perfect on the back. My tutorial is not rocket science, but it did yield a nice finished binding on both sides. I'll warn you, though, my method does require hand stitching the binding to the back of the quilt (as you'd normally do), but to me that yields a prettier binding on the backside.

Here's what you need...

1. Some piping (equal to the perimeter of your quilt plus 4-6"). This is harder to find than you might think. I used to buy micropiping at Joann's for when I make pretty smocked dresses, but was not able to find it. I ordered this from here. It is a perfect size. At 25 cents per yard, how can you go wrong. I have also heard you can use a thicker pearle cotton, though I have not tested this.
2. A cording foot. There are different types of these, but this is what I have and it works well.

Cut the fabric that will cover the micro-cording 1.5" wide, and as long as the piping was cut to. Be sure to piece the sections together with a 45 degree bias cut, or else you will have too much bulk. Then press this in half. The micro-piping will slip neatly into the crease.

Put a matching thread on top and bottom OR a water soluable thread (only if you plan to wash your quilt). Using your cording foot, stitch to the edge of the cording. I usually also secure the top end of the cording before I stitch so it cannot pull out.

After you are done, you will very carefully need to trim the cording by placing your cutting ruler's 0.25" line on top of the seam, and rotary cutting off the excess. This takes a few minutes, but is necessary.

Here's what you'll have a few minutes later. Unfortunately, you cannot start with piping the correct width because this is just too narrow to manupilate with the sewing machine and the cording foot. Susan Cleveland has a nifty piping cutting ruler that actually has a slot for the piping to ride into. But I am cheap, and opted to save my $$ for some other gadget. Everyone is trying to sell us something.

Now, go to your regular sewing foot. Stitch the piping to the quilt's edge (Presumably you have already blocked your quilt at this point). The seam allowance may be set to 1/4" or you can just sew directly on top of the existing seam on the piping. Notice what I do at the corners. As I finish one seam, I back stitch a couple stitches. I then gently pull on the cording. I want to pull out about 1/4" of the cording to relieve the amount of bulk in the binding's corner. Do this on both ends. The next side of piping is started right at the end of the quilt (ie, do not do a folded corner as you'd do with your binding - the cording is stitched in 4 separate pieces). It is a little easier to remove the excess cording before you stitch the piping down.

Next you need to cut your binding however you like. My binding is prepared on bias but either way will work fine. Again, make sure your binding strips are pieced together with 45 degree bias seams to reduce bulk. Listen carefully here. I cut my binding my usual 2-1/4" wide, pressed it in half, etc. Hindsight is 20-20. When I do this piped binding again, I will likely use 2-3/8" instead. Bear in mind that my quilt was quilted with 2 layers of batting, and is thicker than some. But mostly, with the piping, there is more bulk for the binding to have to go around. I did make my binding work with it 2-1/4", but it is a snug binding, and was not always pleasing to stitch it while it wanted to pop open.

So, the last step is pretty much life as usual in terms of sewing on a binding. The only catch is that you have to be slow and careful, and plan to have to have areas that you go back and adjust to make the piping look pretty. Start midway along one side of your quilt. I set my seam to a little wider than 1/4" so that it covers the piping seam. On my machine, 1/4" is a setting of 5.3 and for the binding I used 4.7. It might be at most 1/16" inboard of the seam. It is enough that the threadline on the piping is concealed, and nothing but the tight little bump of the piping is visible. I do not pin my binding because there is enough bulk. I just stitch slowly and carefully. When you reach the corner, do as you usually do to get around the corner when applying continuous binding.... You are now all the way around your quilt, and the binding is sewn down to the top completely. Now take a careful look and see if there are any places that you need to go back and stitch closer to the piping or adjust. I won't lie, I spent nearly 3 hours putting the binding on (not the hand stitching!) this 75" square quilt. It will take some time.

But the finished product will forever change how you do bindings. I promise. The above picture is before the binding is actually stitched to the back side. At this point, check and see how easily your binding is going to wrap the quilt's edge and comer the lines of stitching. If it looks close or that the binding will be very tight, then trim 1/16" or so off of the edge of the quilt, uniformly all the way around all 4 sides. Your binding should be "filled" but not so tight it takes jumbo clamps to hold it down in order to stitch.

Here's my finished binding. I totally love the effect of the piping. For show quilts, this is a very classy edge, and it most definitely will help it to hang more straightly. For any quilt, it is just a lovely way to infuse one more design detail into the finished quilt.

Now, the quilt only needs a sleeve (ahh...150" more hand stitching!) and it is good to go!

Penny Longarm Quilting Sale

Penny Quilting Sale!! - Please note I have received 5 people for this sale already, but I will happily quilt your quilt at regular prices.

I have been really busy quilting these last couple of months, but most of it has been custom quilting. This is fun and pleasing work, but it is time consuming and taxing on me. I have not had the usual number of "easier" quilts to work in between the custom jobs that I normally have. So... I am offering you an opportunity to send me your more utility tops to have them quilted at a great deal.

These tops would not be ones that you want any ditch stitching or custom borders. They would probably not be ones that have been appliqued, but that is your choice. This is purely an edge-to-edge design, and it will be one of my medium density designs too. Designs to select from include a meander/stipple, loops, loops & hearts, water ripple, or perhaps swirls. These can be seen on my website http://www.mainelyquiltsoflove.com/ . I am not doing paper pantograph patterns as a part of this sale, but I am a good freehand quilter and have a nice repetoire of my own patterns.

I will take the first 5 people that email me or post a comment (with a way to contact you). There are a few stipulations. Your quilt must be completed and ready to send. I want to receive these quilts within 10 days. The backing must be larger than the top 3-4" per side (all 4). Your quilt and backing absolutely must lie flat and be square as well. You may send batting, but you do not have to.

One cent per square inch for utility quilting is a tremendous deal. Here's how to figure your cost...
1) find square area of your quilt (length times width in inches) and multiply by 0.01
2) either send batting or I can supply at 0.0025 times the square inches
3) thread charge...$4 up to 60" square, $6.50 to a twin, $9 to a queen, $12 king.

No go ahead and email. Get those quilts finished and ready to snuggle under!

email me directly at msolomo1@maine.rr.com

Nan S. -your comment was so I cannot email you back. Please email me at the above email addy.

Pretty as a Posie

Another mostly custom quilt has come off of my frame. This one was started last weekend as I came down with a nasty cold. It's truly a wonder I got it done because I have been really sick. But my husband took the kids to a monster sledding hill on Saturday, and I got to quilt for an extra several unexpected hours (before the cold/sinus infection truly kicked into high gear).
My client is local. In fact she lives just down the street. This quilt was from a 2009 Quilter magazine, in practically the exact Lakehouse DryGoods fabrics. The materials are gorgeous. I have had ones in the pink line. They are a lovely weight and several have a beautiful irridescence/sheen to them. Her usual quilter wasn't up to quilting feathers for her so it was referred to me. With any luck, I will be able to get more of her business too.
The quilt is a 92" square, so that center section was quite huge to quilt - even on a machine with a 24" quilting space. She gave me a Select QD batting, which I really dislike. It's just too thin to show off the quilting appropriately. Plus the stuff tends to stretch if you are not really careful. Just imagine what this quilt would look like with wool... (dreaming!)

The material at the center is too busy to show off much quilting (especially loft-less quilting), but I stitched a feathered wreath. The green triangles are a gorgeous green/metallic gold tiny check. I just wanted this area to have texture, rather than over feathering the top and having the feathers disappear. I used that flower motif in a few other places so it was a logical thing to put there too. And then, her only real request was that the large white triamgles were feathered like the magazine. I suppose I could have swirled them around a bit more, but I mostly copied the spine layout that was done, and threw in a few more whimsical feathers for variation.

The rest of the quilt is busy fabrics that feathering is either hard to stitch well or hard to see on. These side pannels are pretty fabric, but were speaking to me "I need a trellis..." But not just an ordinary straight (ruler) cross-grid trellis, so I did the diagonal crosshatching with gentle wiggles. It is just a softer look. And the stripe down the sides of the trellis is just a simple egg-dart pattern stitched with template. I suppose it could have been slightly denser, but this is only going on her bed so it ought to be fine. The entire quilt sections are all SID anyhow.

In her log cabin blocks, I did a swirly background filler. It mimics the irridescent swirls that are on a few of the fabrics too, so it all looks very natural.

And a few token pictures of the back side... If there is a single fly in the ointment for this quilt it is the choice of a rather thin white for the backing. It was SO hard keeping track of rogue threads to ensure that you couldn't see them on the back.
It does not appear to lay flat because I have a foam mat underneath it.

I am sure that the client will love this. I am not a blue-gal, and I love it!

Next post I hope to offer up some things to anyone that might be interested. These may include fabrics, scraps, quilting DVD, and a deal quilting your utility quilts (non-customs). Tune in a couple days from now to read all about this.

It is now time for me to go remove this quilt from the blocking board. It is dry! (sigh...that means i have a large piped binding ahead of me today or tomorrow!).

Quilt Blocking

I have found a few decent websites or blogs that discuss how to block a quilt. Most of them are better if your quilt is on the smallish side. Quilts that are heavily quilted, as my floor quilt is, require blocking to return them to their appropriate and original shape (or else they will hang wonky and wavey, and be rather unsightly!). If it is only going onto your bed, then it's not such an issue. But this quilt is heading to MQX in 3 weeks (yea!...just got the email this weekend that it was juried into the show) so I don't really want to give judges and viewers a pimple to see right off the bat.

Here's what I did...
The supplies are simple. There is a little cost involved, but these items are reuseable or you may already have them. I got 4 sheets of 24"x8' (1" thick) styrofoam (interlocking style) from Lowe's. All 4 sheets were about $40. You can use them as a design wall when you are not blocking quilts. Other things I used include a tape measure, metal square, permanent pen and a box of 300 stiff pins. Other websites say to use T-pins, but I thought they were kind of pricey so I got the dressmaker pins - they have a wider shank and don't bend like regular piecing or applique pins. They were under $5.
My quilt is (give or take) 75" square so you also need a large space that can be left undisturbed for several days. I could have cleared a place in the basement, but my bedroom is cleaner and warmer, and because it is 12'x18', it has the requisite 8'x8' space needed. I had to move the bohemoth bed a few feet, but we can survive this week (it's good training for a month from now when we begin our downstairs home remodel - It wll clearly be much messier then). Guess I just have to crawl over my husband to get out of bed :-)

All 4 foam pieces connect to make a large solid surface that the quilt will be dried on.

I taped the pieces together with duct tape just so they couldn't shift any while I blocked the quilt.

I also marked a square corner, and marked lines out from this corner for ~75". This is the corner I started pinning at.

But before there can be pinning, the monster quilt had to take a short bath. No jets or bubble bath, but a 5-10 minute soak to ensure that all fibers were wet. Trust me, handling it (all 18 lb of it) was worse than lifting a wet dog from a tub. I got soaked before I ever started to block it. I didn't dare wring it for fear of messing it up. I blotted as much moisture as I could with 3 towels and then took it to the blocking pad.

I started pinning the quilt to the corner I marked with the square, placing pins every inch or so. The pins are stabbed in at a backwards 45deg angle so they will hopefully not pull out. If I had made some measurements before I soaked the quilt, then I'd know what the "average" length and width of the quilt were, and I'd then stretch the opposing sides of the quilt to be this distance. We'll pretend I did this. In actuality, I stretched them to be the same distance, but my quilt is out of square by about half an inch so length and width are not the same. Oh well. I also could visually shift the placement of the edges so that all of the stripes and borders appear most straight. The whole process took about ah hour and a half. Lots of wet knees. OK, just 2, but they are quite damp still.

Now I have a fan running in the bedroom, and I have jacked the heat up from the normal daytime setting of 60F to 68F, in hopes of drying this beast before next week. I may also go back later and walk gently on top of it with some towels on the quilt's top to get out unnecessary water. I am pleased with how straight the borders look, as they were looking pretty wonky towards the last times it was on the frame.

It may well not win anything at MQX. In fact, I highly doubt that it will. But it is an important step in my quiltmaking journey. It was good enough to get juried into the show. Now I am trying to do the last things I can to make it show as well as it can.

Tune in next week as I (hopefully) document the successful application of a piped binding.

Recent Thimbleberries Sampler

Back to the real world for me. I have been away from my quilting for 6 days and now I must get some customer work quilted off. This past weekend, I took my kids to visit my SIL and their cousins in CT. I was able to deliver this to my aunt. It was the last of the 5 quilts she gave me in August to have quilted. Though Thimbleberries are definitely not something I like, I think that the finished quilt is nice. Here's the full shot - I think it is a smallish queen or a good sized double bed quilt. It's some sample blocks and too many (in my opinion!) borders.

Before I do any closer-ups, here are a few shots of the back, where the stitching shows up more. The back is a green print. I combined 2 of the borders to simplify the number of quilting designs.

One of my goals of this quilt was to do a custom quilt, but without the excessive use of ruler work. The wiggly crosshatching is one of my favorites (kind of looks like a mattress quilting!) - I will definitely do that again. I chalked out regular cross hatching, then just stitched it wiggly without any rulers. Nice and quick, unless you count the side I had to take out because I missed the proper chalk line! Doh!

I did some real feathers, some looser ferny feathers, and other simple (and at times organic) quilting to tie these together.

OK, now to the front. Each of the sampler blocks is quilted like this in a soft sage thread. It kind of goes against my normal convention of stitching in the color of the sashing or background fabric (white), but I really wanted to minimize thread changes. As it was, I goofed and neglected to take out a bobbin when I changed a top thread and had to pick this out. Drat.

There's way too much SID needed on this quilt, with all of its small borders and sashings. I thought I was going to go nuts.

I'm not in love with doing swags, but on this heavy print, and wide outer border, I really didn't know whatelse to do. Piano keys would have worked, but that was wider than my ruler!

The setting triangles turned out really nicely feathered. The thread matches perfectly, but the quilting shows in the light.

This week is a bit of a bust for accomplishing much. I have company tomorrow evening. My kids are out of school this week too. My floor quilt is on the frame for a max of 2 days for finishing quilting, then off for good. I will get the foam board to do a proper blocking. I made piping and binding last week, and then it is finito. I fully expect this weekend ot make decent progress on a gorgeous customer quilt - one that the client wants decoratively feathered.

Carpenter Stars

I need another project like I need a hole in my head. I have yet to put together my beachy blocks into a background. I still need to piece the parts together for a commission quilt that the client is finally getting around to paying for. And, I need to make binding & piping for my floor quilt. What can I say?...I work better under pressure. And if that is not enough, I just got a call from the school nurse informing me that my 8 yr old chipped a permanent tooth in gym. And we are departing for CT in 2 days. Great. Dumb tooth. Dumb kid. Dumb frisbee. Need I belch out more for you to grasp my frustration. Last thing I want is for my kid to look like a redneck any longer than he has to. Even if he thinks that it would be amusing (and I am sure he would).

So I have opted not to put another quilt on the frame this week since I am leaving Friday at lunch time. So I spent more time today putzing with these strip sets and resulting diamond blocks. I sense that they will drive me berserk when I get around to doing all the y-seams to put them together, but what the heck. I rarely take the easy road.
The only groundrule I have imposed on myself on this project is that I will not buy fabric for anything but the backing. So, all of these have come from my stashes of goodness. The colors coordinate wonderfuly with my decor, so I suspect that this will hang in my new dining room next summer.

Now, the offending kid just got home. Gotta go inspect the tooth.

More talk on the Tools of My Trade

Earlier in the week I showed a bunch of the templates I use quilting, and talked about my favorites and why. Today I am showing you another tool I use - The Bamboo digital pen tablet. I got this over a year ago, and while I don't use it to design the quilting for every quilt, I do use it for the most custom of designs.
I take a JPG photo and open it in Photoshop. Then I can define layers which can be turned off and on depending what designs I draw that I want to show. It does take a little getting used to drawing on a tablet, but looking at the screen to see what is drawn. The hand-eye coordination is a skill to develop. Admittedly, there are advantages to just scribbling out a design on paper, since I can take paper anywhere I go. But since I do a large amount of my business with clients nationwide, I like to be able to have a design that I can email to them. If I find I dislike something I have drawn, it is easy enough to just erase and redraw, or just delete the layer.

I have recently finished all of the applique and embroidery on this quilt. I know it's going to be a ditch-stitcher's nightmare, but that is a different story. I hope to have it quilted for the Maine show in late July. So, time to get on the design. I've been pondering this design a while now so when I started sketching on the photo yesterday, it really came together quickly. I had to do a few checks to see if my templates can do the particular curves I have sketched, but mostly it was easy. I'd sketch out an area, and then copy and paste it to the other similar spaces on the top. Here's the corner concept...

I have a ton of SID to do, but I envision a few ghost flowers, a feathered border to define the space, and some unknown filler.

The center will eventually have small 3D flowers added at the end of the vines. And the blank spaces will be filled somehow too. I like the rays since they bring the eye outward and inward towards the center.

The cathedral windows portion of the quilt will be ghost-extended into the tan background. I am undecided still about what color thread I will use, but I am leaning towards a soft lavender. I want it to show subtly on both the tan background and the purple pieced cathedral window. I am also planning to try my hand at stitching a curved & woven area. The background of this will be filled in to give relief to the cross-weaves. ...something ambitious to make me think hard (and pull out my ever-increasing gray hairs!).

1930's quilt

I have yet a 3rd client stemming from my doing the Folsom Quilt & Fiber Guild's opportunity quilt. It's all so circuitous how these started, I can hardly believe that I have clients sending me quilts from northern California (pan back to my fall posts to learn more). Even stranger yet that I lived there and was actually part of the community in that area for 3 years, but didn't know any of them then. Some aspects of life really do come full circle. Anyhow, this quilt is being given to the guild's president in a month. I suspect that it's safe to post this here, that she won't fine my whereabouts (or her gift's whereabouts!). The client sent me this quilt, all from 1930's reproduction prints. Actually at least one of the blocks is from real 1930 prints too. I have learned from MQ Resource that this pattern is a 2008-2009 Fons & Porter pattern, and appeared on it's cover.
Its pretty large - around 78"x95" or so. There are still some yo-yo's to be attached to the vine ends and the flower centers on the applique borders. All in all, I think that the quilting compliments the quilt. It's light, feminine and free. I love when the quilting extends beyonds the lines of the piecing. It's more unexpected that way, rather than to just have the quilting follow the lines of the blocks & sashings.

I scalloped feathers around the border of the quilt, and put them coming off of the applique vines. Once the yo-yo's are added, it won't look like the feather starts so abruptly.

Despite there really being a lot of ditch (aka ruler) quilting, I did do much of the quilt freehanded. I want to get back to doing this more, and relying on the rulers so much. Rulers may be very exact, but using them is time consuming.

I added the ribbons within the straight lines mostly as an afterthought, because the space seemed underquilted. In hindsight, however, they seem so appropriate. I love how they soften the straight linework.

Here'sm y favorite block - who doesn't just love soft lavender??

The center of the quilt is quilted slightly different from the edges, just to set it off a little bit. I did the white filler areas with more feathering and pebbling. I could have done it identical to the periphery, with the small flowers & swirls, but this seemed to make a good focal point. Dontcha think?

The back is a light green gingham. It was terrifically forgiving, not really showing anything but the texture. I like it when backings look that way, rather than being a mass of a zillion threads.

The only regret with this quilt I have has to do with the white fabric. As you all have read dozens of times here, I hate thin white fabrics! I picked out more and more dark migrant threads that were not trimmed well or came from the darker prints. If you have to spend more money anywhere, let it be on a good weight white!!!

Cheers, and have a very nice (and if at all possible, warm!) weekend.

Background

The 48 7-1/2" blocks that make up my next quilt are finally done. These are paper-pieced kaleidoscope blocks. I'm kind of sick of paper piecing. I am so frugal, thatthe small amount of waste from paper-piecing bugs me. Plus, it makes a mess in my studio. This background is constructed of about 20 neutrals and 10-12 blues and greens, all batiks...my favorite. Does it look like anything familiar? Maybe a beach.
It will have some major applique added to it to transform it to another level. You'll just have to stay tuned to see what it will become!

Valentine girl always wants to be in the pictures :-)