Saturday, February 22, 2014

Brycen's zigzag quilt

I posted about this quilt here, here, here, and here.
I finished the quilting and got it bound. Then decided to wash it before photographing it. MISTAKE! I took it out of the dryer and immediately noticed the lovely texture washing it created THEN I noticed that the binding had not shrunk at all, in fact I think it stretched. The binding rippled, it waved to you, it was terrible. I almost cried. Then I got out my seam ripper and ripped, and ripped. I had done a terrific job of getting the binding on, machine sewn twice...then I ripped some more till it was out. Then I tried to get a picture of the ripple...here you can see it;
I think the problem was putting a bias edge quilt on a stretchy (minky) back. DO NOT DO THIS. now to fix it. This is what I did; I looked for twill tape but I didn't have any so I substituted a piece of selvage that I ripped off a couple yard piece of fabric. I layed the selvedge across the quilt in the middle and marked it with a red permanent pen, then I folded it and marked it in the middle and at the quarter mark.
Then I marked one side with quarter marks too.
I also sewed a basting stitch between each quarter mark. Then I pinned the marks on the selvage to the 
marks on the quilt.
 This is the area where the bobbin thread kept breaking, the more I worked with it the more it grew!

After breaking my bobbin thread 3 times I put some polyester thread in my bobbin, it's little bit stronger and it didn't break any more. I used my gathering thread just like doing a gathered skirt and pulled it in and pinned and then sewed the selvage down.
I stitched very close to the selvage edge, twice, then trimmed the quilt a little bit so that the selvage would be completely covered by the binding. Then I bound it....again.
 My lovely helpers. :)
The back is lovely too. Now it just needs a label and I can send it on it's way.
41 x 50 inches, yellow variegated king tut thread, so fine in the bobbin. free-hand spirals.

1 comment:

Liz Johnston said...

Glad the problems in life teach us.