A couple of weeks ago both of my kids went to church camp, which gave me plenty of time to finish a quilt. I mean, I seem to finish them fine while they are home too, but on the day I was home working on it, I could just sew and not feel like I needed to be doing something else. This was a small one, and I have been trying to make larger quilts this year. And yet it was a different material, so it was a bit of an experiment. Two years ago (i think?) my parents went Hawaii to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. My mom brought me a few packs of precut Hawaiian fabrics. This set was rayon, super soft and drapy, but not my usual fabric for a quilt. After doing research online, I decided to use a 1/2" seam instead of the usual 1/4" just to help keep it from fraying as much and didn't change much else.
I didn't have as much variation as I would have liked to keep from repeating fabrics on the rows, but it ended up good overall I think. For the backing I wanted a fabric with rayon in it, to keep a consistent washing / drying pattern on both sides of the quilt, I also wanted a fabric I did not have to piece together, which would help avoid fraying along that seam. I found a linen/rayon blend in the apparel section which was 54" wide, just the size I needed. And it was available in a green that coordinated with the leaves on the front side.
I decided to use the off cuts after quilting to create the binding. And at this point--well, if I was doing this quilt again, I would do the binding process differently. I briefly considered folding over the backing to self-bind the quilt. I wasn't sure about the durability and it is a little tricky squaring up the quilt after quilting it when you do that. So I made the double fold binding, sewed it on with the usual 1/4" seam, folded it over and then stitched it closed on the top. Completely forgot that I should probably make that seam a 1/2" one. And sure enough, anywhere that the 1/4" seam got a little too close, the binding on the back where I had folded it over was fraying and separating from the quilt. I got to pick out those seams to reattach in about 6 to 8 places (typical is one or none). It has now been washed and will hopefully hold up.
My daughter immediately claimed it when she came home.
Comments
Post a Comment