Adding Borders to a Finished Center

Hi all -

A friend expressed an interest in quilt-as-you-go techniques and I had a left-over piece of quilted fabric from one of the little bags I made recently, so I thought I'd do a tutorial about how to add borders to an already quilted top. This isn't a quilt-as-you-go technique for combining already quilted blocks into a single quilt, but could be used for creating a quilt-as-you-go medallion quilt. I found it useful in the past when I had a little sample from a class that I wanted to enlarge as a gift for a friend.

For this project, I started with this piece of quilted fabric left over from making a bag:

Either side could be used as the front -- I chose the dark side. To make things more fun, I stitched a bunch of fancy stitches across the piece using fun threads and trimmed things up nicely:

So this is my completed top. Now I want to add borders to make it bigger.

For the first border, I start by picking my fabrics for both the front and the back and cutting the pieces to size. I decided I wanted a 3" finished border so I cut the borders 3.5" wide. Here is the border piece I cut for the top (the border fabric is just lying next to the quilted top):

And here is the border piece for the back:

You can see in the pictures that I cut the border pieces the same width as the center piece. This made it easier to line things up, but made me have to trim the center a bit at the end. If you have a center that you can't trim, then you should cut the border pieces longer than the center piece so that you can just trim the border when finished.

The first step is to line up the top border with the quilt top, right sides together, and line up the back border piece with the quilt back, right sides together and pin everything. This gives you 3 layers: The back border piece, right side up; the quilt top, right side up and the front border piece, wrong side up. This is what it looks like from the top:

 And from the back:

Stitch through all 3 layers, .25" from the edge. When finished, the front looks like this:

And the back looks like this:

Now it's time to add the batting. I cut the batting piece the same size as the border pieces:

Because of the seam allowances, this makes the border batting piece .5" too wide, but that gives you a little something extra to hold onto as you quilt and something to trim off when completed. Use a zigzag stitch to attach the batting piece to the quilt:

I set my zigzag to be approximately .25" wide, so that the needle goes in to about the center of the seam allowance on the top side and the same amount on the batting side. I butt the pieces up to each other and use the Bernina #10 foot, which has a nice divider down the middle to help keep the join neat, and sew across. As you're sewing, be sure to keep the end of the batting piece even with the end of the top. Otherwise, your batting will tend to stretch on the edge and won't lay flat when you're finished. Here is what it looks like with the batting attached from the front:

And from the back:

Now you just press the border pieces over toward the batting and quilt that border as desired. Here I used wavy piano keys, a border favorite of mine:

And from the back:

Trim up the edges and you're ready to add the next border.

You can add the borders in any order that you want, depending on how you want the seams to look. For the classic look, I added the opposite border next:

If your piece is small, like mine, you can add the two opposite borders at the same time. This time, I cut the border pieces and batting slightly longer than the quilt top to leave space for trimming:

Since I used a different thread for the piecing than I used for the quilting, doing the borders at the same time saved me from having to change threads quite as often. But that also meant that I had some flappy fabric to deal with on one side of the quilt while I was working on the other side of the quilt. That's why I'm not sure I'd want to do that on a larger quilt.

If making a large medallion quilt, you could start with a center and just keep adding borders until you're done. If you are quilting your quilt on a domestic machine, adding borders in this way allows you to do your quilting with just the width of the border under the arm of your machine, much easier than quilting the whole quilt at the end.Your border pieces can be pieced rather than plain pieces of fabric. In that case, you just have to be extra careful in lining things up.

For this little quilt, I still need to add some applique and the binding, but I'll leave that for another day.

Nancy

PS - I'm hoping to write more tutorials as I go along. If you have a technique that you would like me to demonstrate, just let me know and I'll see what I can do. I love to try to figure different techniques out!

Hospice Quilt Progress

Hi all -

Just a quick post to let you know how the different projects are coming along. First, the good news: my Hoffman Challenge quilt was accepted! So I just finished putting on the hanging sleeve and label, and will put it in the mail tomorrow morning. Their acceptance email said something about "if your quilt is selected for the traveling show, it will be sent back" so it sounds like there's still a possibility that it won't be traveling. Four of my friends also had quilts accepted so I hope that they all travel and all go to the first show, which is out here, so that I can get pictures of them all hanging together!

While waiting to hear about the challenge, I made some good progress on my Hospice quilt. I got all of the red and white stripes pieced into columns:

The next step will be adding the blue pieces at the bottom of each column and them I just piece the columns together and the top is done. I think I'll applique the stars onto the blue pieces before putting them together so I have a little bit of figuring out to do. I have to draw a good start shape and then figure out where to put the star on the piece so everything will line up nicely. And as an added bonus, I now have this pile of 72 5.5" half-square triangles to use in another quilt:

There'll be more designing that'll need to be done for that.....

On a sad note, a friend of mine had to put her dog down last week. That's always so difficult! To help comfort her, I decided to make her a little quilt. Milly was a very sweet brown and white Corgi. I decided to start with brown and white for the quilt. I added black for her beautiful black eyes. To add some splashes of color, I thought pink hearts would look nice with the other colors. I love pink and brown together! Here's what I came up with:

I'm not really pleased with the composition, but I continued on with it because I think it will mean a lot to her and I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible to try to help comfort her while the hurting is the greatest. I just have to quilt the border and add the binding and it'll be ready to give to my friend. Here is a close-up of some of the stitching:

That's it for now. I hope you are all having a wonderful summer!

Nancy

Cats Looking for New Home

Hi all -

A friend of mine sadly needs to find a new home for her cats. She and her kids have developed bad cat allergies and are just too miserable to keep them. Benedryl isn't working anymore. This is Charlie:

And this is Twix:

They are 8-year-old littermates and are both extremely sweet. I can't take them because I already have two cats and that's really enough for one person. If you know of anyone in the Colorado area who might want a couple of cats, please leave me a comment and I'll get you in touch with my friend. While it would be nice to keep the cats together, I'm sure she'd be willing to separate them rather than sending them together to a shelter.

Thanks!

Nancy

Lil' Gee Bags

Hi all -

For fun this week, I decided to work on a couple of little bags from another of those cheap kits I got from Connecting Threads. This time the kit contained the Lil' Gee Bag pattern and fabric for two little bags:

I've been wanting a little bag to keep at work so I can just throw my keys and cell phone in the bag when I take Lance for a walk on days when I'm wearing pants that don't have pockets. I think one of these will be perfect! Here's a look at the inside:

And the pocket on the  back:

I also finished the scarf I've been working on:

This is from the One-Skein Scarf pattern by Bobbe Morris in the book One-Skein Wonders. It was easy to knit and has a wonderful texture:

Lance and Buttercup like it, too:

Next, I think I'll work on my first Hospice quilt. I've been planning on making quilts for the Kansas City Hospice House ever since my mom passed away there in 2013, but I'm good at procrastinating. I finally talked to someone there to find out what size would be useful and have designed my first quilt. They mentioned that they generally have a higher need for patriotic quilts, so I came up with this design:

I plan to piece this using the same technique I used for my other chevron quilt described here. I'm going to try to be careful to write down all of my steps as I go along so I can write up patterns for both quilts. Although I really don't need it, I decided to splurge on some new fabric for this quilt. The fabrics on the left are candidates for piecing the top; the star fabric on the right is the backing and the other fabrics on the right are just ones that appealed to me:

My plan is to use a different fabric for each chevron, but the same fabric across that chevron row, if that makes sense. I got extra so I'd have choices and they'll be good to have on hand for future Hospice quilts.

Nancy

Uchangamfu Finished

Hi all -

I'm excited to say that my African dance quilt is finished! Well, almost finished. I still need to add the hanging sleeve and label (as usual....), but I'll get those on this weekend. Here is a picture of the finished quilt:

I love it! I decided to call it Uchangamfu, which is Swahili for "exuberance" (at least that's what Google tells me).

This was made from the pattern Dance by Wendy Mamattah in the September 2015 issue of American Quilter magazine. The background fabric is a hand-dye that I made in a class many years ago. I used a Cherrywood hand-dye for the figures and assorted African fabrics for the dresses, the border, the backing and the binding. I used YLI invisible thread for outlining/quilting the figures and Superior SoFine for the rest of the quilting.

For the background quilting, I started by quilting a sun in the corner:

I got that idea from the sample in the magazine where she quilted a small sun in the center above the figures. I then quilted pebbles to represent the ground below the figures:

And some other quilting to represent the sky in the rest of the background:

I quilted wavy piano keys in the border just to hold everything down. And I was lucky to find the perfect backing fabric in my stash of African fabrics:

 Again, I'm really pleased with how this turned out and think my niece will be thrilled when she gets it for Christmas!

I've also been doing some knitting. I made another hat from that lovely blue and green variegated yarn:

This is from the Ups and Downs Hat pattern by Emily Dormier that I found on Ravelry. It's a bit hard to see in my picture, but this hat has a cool chevron pattern knitted into it. I really like how it turned out and will probably make another one in a solid yarn to show off the texture at some point. I decided to make this hat because I had two skeins of the yarn and started a scarf with the leftovers from the previous skein after making that hat. I had about half a scarf done when I ran out of yarn so I decided to make another hat out of the other skein so that I could just knit the scarf until I ran out of yarn so I don't have any leftovers sitting around when I'm done. The scarf is turning out pretty cool, too. I should have that one done in time for my next post.

The columbine are blooming right now so I thought I'd share a couple of pictures from our morning hikes. Here is one little group of columbine:

Aren't they beautiful? And here's my obligatory picture of Lance saying "Hurry up!!":

Hopefully, that will satisfy the Lance fans since I never got around to taking a picture of him in the hat.....

Happy 4th everyone!

Nancy

Hoffman Challenge Finished!

Hi all -

My Hoffman Challenge quilt is finally finished and entered into the contest. At least, I hope it's entered. Somehow I got to the payment part before I got to the registration part so I hope they're able to match up my payment with my quilt! I'm sure it'll all work out.

Here is the picture of the final quilt:

I had thought about adding a line of twilling stitch (a knotted embroidery stitch) using black perl cotton between the circle and the border quilting, but there was a spot where the border quilting was too close to the circle for that, so I punted. I think that would have looked good, but I'm also pleased with it the way it is. I also thought about adding some 3D butterflies but decided that the beauty of this quilt is in the simplicity so skipped those, too. Here is the detail shot I submitted:

I decided to name the quilt Taijitu, which is what the yin-yang symbol is according to Wikipedia. I thought that was a more interesting name than Yin-Yang. I do still need to add the label and the hanging sleeve. I'm waiting to see if this gets accepted into the challenge before adding the sleeve because I use thumb tacks in the hanging sleeve to hang quilts at home so like a flat hanging sleeve for that, but would need to add slack in the sleeve if it's going to be hung in the show. Either way, I'm happy with what I did and also happy to move on to other projects.

Speaking of other projects, I've made good progress on the African dance quilt for my niece. I've cut and fused all of the applique pieces:

I'm really happy with how it looks so far. Now I have to sew the applique pieces to secure them. I want to do that while doing the quilting so I don't get any extra thread build-up around the appliques. Some of these pieces are tiny so I'm really concerned about what's going to happen when I sew over them. For example, the neck pieces are about 1/16" wide and 1/2" long. But I'll just use a monofilament thread and as thin of a needle as I can get to work and just go for it. I'm sure it'll end up working out fine! The original pattern doesn't have a border, but I might want to add one. I don't want to handle the piece too much before the small applique pieces are sewn down, so I'll just sandwich it with an oversized batting and backing so I can add a border quilt-as-you-go style if I decide I want one. I should be able to get started on that this weekend. It's exciting to have a project that is moving along this quickly!

I've also done a little knitting. This is the Spiral Hat pattern by Marci Blank from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders:

It was a quick and easy knit. It ended up a little bit small because the instructions said to knit until it was 5" tall, and then start the decrease rows. But this pattern squishes up a lot so I wasn't sure how to measure it. Do you unroll the rolled hem? Do you smooth it flat? I should probably of done a few more rounds before doing the decreases, but it's still cute and will fit someone. It doesn't fit Lance:

The last couple of weeks have been a bit hard on me because it's been pine pollen season up here. This time of year we get a thick layer of bright yellow pine pollen all over everything:

It's hard to get a picture of the pollen, but you get the idea. I kept the windows closed in the house as much as possible, but, of course, we had a heat spell at the same time. It even got up to 90 degrees at my house up in the mountains! In June! But I survived and am appreciating being able to breathe again. Happily, we had a couple of little rain storms this week so the deck has been cleaned off pretty well for me now and I look forward to spending some time out there again this weekend.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Nancy

A New Start, Hoffman Challenge Progress and Other Crafts

Hi all -

Sorry I've been remiss in my blog posts. My main focus has been my Hoffman Challenge quilt, but I haven't made a lot of progress because my heart just isn't in it. But I'll go into that below, where you can skip it if you're also doing the challenge and don't want to see what I'm doing.

First, I do have a couple of completed non-quilting projects. The first is a pair of fingerless mitts that I really love:

These are from the Sweet Pea Mitts pattern by Lisa Swanson in the book Lace One-Skein Wonders. I planned on keeping these for myself from the start and I really like how they turned out. Here's what one looks like on my hand:

I think these will be nice to wear in the house in the winter when it gets really cold. My house doesn't heat really well when I'm not running the pellet stove, so I spend most of the winter in the 50s. Great when you're having hot flashes, but a bit cold when they go away. Anyway, I'll still be able to quilt and knit with these on in the winter.

My other project is a book I made at a friend's 60th birthday party. She had won a bookmaking class at a silent auction at her church and decided to use it for her party. She made a bunch of covers ahead of time for us to choose from, all of the supplies were provided and we tore the pages to the right sizes and sewed the books together. First you sew pages together into "pamphlet signatures" (I think that's the right term); then you weave the exposed thread at the back of the signatures together to make a spine. Here are pictures of my book:

Front

Back

Spine

My weaving wasn't as neat as I would have liked, but I was using waxed linen and it was over 90F outside, so the thread was getting gooey and sticking together. At least, I think it was the heat. But I'm still really pleased with how it turned out. Here is a picture showing how the threads look on the inside of the back section:

And here you can see how the back side of the cover is a page inside the book:

The back cover does the same. The teacher brought us a really nice paper to use for the pages. She says it will hold up to painting or whatever else we might decide to do to embellish the inside pages. I love the feel of it! I think it turned out really cool, so I've ordered some supplies and plan on making books for my nieces and maybe my nephew, although he probably won't be into it like they will be.

On the quilting side, I did start a new project while my Hoffman Challenge quilt was blocking (more on that below). This project has been on my mind since I saw the pattern in the September 2015 issue of American Quilter. The pattern is Dance by Wendy Mamattah:

When I saw this, I knew I had to make it for my niece, Terra, who is passionate about African dance. In fact, I'd been admiring this artist's work for a while and wondering how I could make something like it for Terra, so I was really thrilled when I saw the pattern in the magazine. I just didn't have time to make it before last Christmas so it's been waiting for me get going on it for this Christmas. It took me a while to pick fabrics, but I think I like what I have right now. Here's the background piece I picked:

This is part of a piece that I dyed in a class years ago. I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but the background is a pretty light green. I like the colors and also like how the colors are heavier on the bottom, grounding the quilt. I had planned on trying to paint a background since I knew that Terra would appreciate a hand-made fabric, but I really need to experiment with that first and then I remembered my hand-dyes so looked through those. I think this will work well.

The on to the dresses. I've been collecting African fabrics at quilt shows and through Web sites that give people in Africa opportunities to support their families for a while now, so I dug through those and picked a couple of my favorites and also dug through my Cherrywood solids for a skin fabric. Here's what I ended up with:

I'm pretty happy with these, but reserve the right to change my mind as I go along. I've also enlarged the pattern:

so I'm ready to start putting it together when I finish my Hoffman Challenge quilt. I didn't go any further than this because I would have needed to get out my lightbox, but I need my cutting table (the only place I have for the lightbox) for trimming my Hoffman Challenge quilt before adding the binding. My lightbox is pretty big, so I didn't want to get it out just to have to put it away again.

So, that's all of my non-Hoffman Challenge work. Scroll down if you want to see what I've done with my challenge quilt.































In my last post, I had just finished the quilting of the borders of my challenge quilt. Now I had to quilt the yin-yang symbol itself. It was difficult for me to decide what I wanted to quilt there because I knew it wouldn't be seen because of the busyness of the fabric. I wanted my quilting lines to reduce the impact of the butterflies, if possible, but not distract from the quilt itself. I settled on a wavy diamond grid from a stencil that I have. The grid reminds me of a butterfly net, corralling the butterflies in the symbol. So I got out my pounce powder and started marking:

I thought it looked pretty good:

I got out some black Glide to use in the black areas and white Glide to use in the white areas. I wanted a fairly heavy thread to push these butterflies back a bit. What I didn't notice was that, while the markings look great on the black background areas, it disappears on top of the butterflies. So when I started quilting, I kept getting lost. So my quilting ended up not being on the marked lines and I lost a bit of the evenness of the grid. Also, when I went back to add more marks, my wandering lines made it impossible to line up the stencil again. So I threw in the towel on evenness and decided to just freehand the net. I took my trusty Clover white pen and a ruler and drew straight lines where the grid should go, then quilted over those with wavy lines. After finishing the black side, I took my blue pen and drew lines on the white side so I could quilt that area in white. I had hoped to quilt the white lines as seamless continuations of the black lines, but my wanderings before drawing the lines made that not work out perfectly, but I lined things up as best I could. Here's some of the white quilting lines with the registration lines:

It's not perfect, but I like the effect and I don't think anyone will notice but me. And it's consistently inconsistent, just like we like. Now it was time to block the quilt to prepare for binding. In my frustration with the lines, I'd tried all sorts of marking tools on the quilt, so I ran it through the washing machine to try to get all of that out. I'm a lazy quilter, so I never try the markers on test fabric before going for it so it's always a question of how things will turn out in the end. Luckily, most of the lines came out. The only lines that didn't were the straight lines I drew around the perimeter for lining up the border quilting. And it was nice to have those straight lines to look at while I was stretching the quilt for blocking. Here it is while blocking:

I recently picked up some cheap interlocking rubber floor mats at Costco because I'd seen those suggested for blocking knitting, and they worked really well for my quilt, too. Here it is now that it's dried and removed from the mats:

And a close-up where you can hopefully see the marks that didn't come out along the edge:

But the middle looks good so I'm okay with it:

Now on to the binding. Then I'll have to quilt the little circles in the yin-yang symbol. I was guessing they would need some quilting and they were really puffy when it came out of the wash so I'll fix that. For those, I'll use monofilament thread to quilt around the outline of the butterflies and probably use swirls as a background fill to make the butterflies pop more. Then, time permitting, I'll probably add some embellishment. It's pretty plain so it needs something. I'm thinking a circle of twilling (a knotted hand stitch) between the yin-yang symbol and the border quilting in black perl cotton. Then I just saw a method for making 3D butterflies in an old issue of Quilters' Newsletter Magazine that might be fun to add. The could be butterflies who escaped the net. We'll see what I end up with.

That's all for now. Hope you're all having a great start to summer! The pine trees are dropping their pollen right now at my house so I'm surrounded by bright yellow pollen that doesn't play well with my allergies, but that should be done in another week and then I can start enjoying the great outdoors again.

Nancy