Fearless Machine Binding - a Tutorial

I have to admit, I actually love to do hand finishing for my bindings.  I know, it's crazy.  But it's a rare occasion, especially these days with a five month old, that I get to sit down and just focus on one thing, so I like that hand binding forces me into it.

But also because I have a five month old, I've found that I need to adjust my sewing project plans to things that I can work on in shorter time periods.  And I found that hand binding just doesn't fall under that criteria. So I tried a couple different machine binding techniques (zig-zag, blanket stitch, etc.) before I settled on this technique as my standard for machine binding.

I won't go over the steps prior to machine finishing the binding, other than to say I use a 2.5" binding width.  There are some great tutorials out there if you'd like more details about how to attach the binding, my favorite being Sharon Schamber's tutorial.

So let's get started!

Thank You, Cancer

Twenty years ago today I was on the way to my high school's homecoming game for the first (and what would be the only) time since graduating. That day, two months into my freshmen year in college, just one month past my 18th birthday, is a day I will not likely forget. Not for the excitement of the game nor the reunion with friends, but because of an unscheduled meeting I had just come from with a man I'd met only once before in my life, on the day that I was born. That man, who wore a bow tie to work every day and, if still alive would be well over 100 years old, had just told me that I almost certainly had cancer. A malignant tumor growing on my right ovary. I didn't hear anything he said after the word 'malignant', just the swishing of the automatic sliding doors in the hospital lobby, where he told us to meet him that night. The woman sitting across from us was knitting. I wondered what brought her there that night. Or if she had any idea what she had just witnessed. Until that day I had never known anyone who had survived cancer.

Four Square Contruction

A couple folks have been asking me how I put together the Four Square quilt that I recently published on the Modern Quilt Guild Facebook page. I thought I'd put together some quick instructions for how I constructed it.

I'll break the instructions down into the following parts:

Design & Color Choices

Breakdown of Design for Piecing

Piecing

Quilting

Binding

Note that the finished size of this quilt is ~60x60.

Design & Color Choices

I designed this quilt on Corel Draw on my Mac (which I no longer use because it's pretty buggy on the Mac and the Mac version is no longer supported by Corel). If you are interested in learning how to design your own quilts using an inexpensive software package that you probably already have on your computer, checkout the Fresh Lemon's tutorial for using Adobe Photoshop. I now use Adobe Illustrator because I was able to get an inexpensive version through my job.

Four Square Quilting

Whew! Finally got my 'Four Square' top quilted! It's an original design that I came up with a while back based on my love of squares. I had two motivations for getting it quilted. The first is that I wanted to enter it into the Modern Quilt Showcase in Houston this year. The second is that I was fast approaching my third trimester (yes, I'm pregnant!) and was already starting to have problems reaching over my longarm!

At first I was going to do some straight line quilting on it. But when I tested out some straight line designs, they just looked too plain. Then my husband suggested I used some spirals or concentric circles. At first I totally opposed the idea. I mean, why would you want to ruin something so perfectly square by putting circles in it, right? But then when I auditioned a couple circular designs, I found that I could do the circles in a way that really complimented the squares. I'm really happy I listened to his advice and love the way the quilt turned out.

AMQG Block of the Month

For the winter AMQG retreat I decided to bring all my UFOs. I got so much done it was great. As always it was a great time...even though I could not participate in 'boobin' drinking game!

Finally got my (2011) AMQG block of the month blocks (left) done! Woo hoo!!! I also got a couple more Summer Sample blocks done (right). Even though it's now winter, I was still happy to have time to work on them! Can't wait to finish the rest.

Variation on Double Take Quilt-Along

This weekend at the Austin Modern Quilt Guild Retreat held at the Wimberley Quilt Ranch, I finished piecing a variation on the Double Take Quilt -Along. Instead of using dark squares (Block B) throughout the top, I replaced every other row with dark stripes.

To modify the instructions for this:
1) Use 1 yd of dark fabric rather than 2/3 yd.
2) After making the long strips for Block B, simply cut the pieced strips into 6.5" pieces, until you get a total of 36 dark stripe blocks.
3) Cut 25 3.5" pieces in order to finish Block B and continue with the instructions for finishing Block B.
4) When assembling the quilt, simply follow the layout in the image shown.

Endless Squares

Whenever we are redo-ing a room in our house and have to consider the design of an object in it, my husband always knows what I will say: 'I don't care, as long as it's square!' I really do love squares! I only like curves when they are accompanied by or are complimenting squares or something with hard edges. So when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my next quilt design, I decided to make it a play on squares.

I came up with the design above. And while piecing it, I even did the thing I swore I would never do again....iron the seams open. In this case, the small squares were so small (1" finished), they were easier to keep square when they were ironed open. Two things made making the open seams a better experience than my previous one. First, I shortened the stitch length on my machine from 2.4 to 2.1. Second, thanks to a tip from fellow modern quilter, Judy, I used spray starch when ironing the seams. Between these two things, I had a much more pleasant seam opening experience. That being said, I still prefer to iron my seams to one side wherever possible!

Now, on to figuring out how the heck to quilt this thing!?!

Double Take Quilt-Along - Quilting

So your top is pieced, now you are wondering how the heck to quilt it. Another great thing about technology today is that you can try out different quilting options without ever having to sew a stitch, or more importantly, pick out stitches when you don't like it!

I decided to keep the quilting simple for this top design. And geometric. I love quilt patterns that are geometric. It must be the engineer in me.

First I looked at doing circles to contrast the hard edges of the top:

Click to see more detail!

These circles seemed too plain to me, so I tried out some larger ones that would over-lap each other:

Click to see more detail!

I like how that looks. Definitely a candidate. Next let's see what some straight lines would do for the top design:

Click to see more detail!

I definitely like the straight lines, but think maybe it needs a bit more quilting. Let's try one more:

Click to see more detail!

This is perfect. It complements the top design and also gives it a bit of a modern plaid feel. This is a pretty simple design that you can do on your domestic machine, but it is also an easy design to do on a longarm if you have access to one.

I chose to use white thread to quilt the top. For the batting, I decided to use a 100% cotton batting in white - white because much of the top (as well as my back) are white. I've found that some white fabrics, even though they are a good quality, cannot hide the natural color of non-bleached batting. Because I wanted the quilt to be a little thicker than usual, I used a thicker loft batting.

Here is the finished quilt:

I won't get into the details of how to bind the quilt. There is a great tutorial on perfect binding from award winning quilter Sharon Schamber. Check it out here! I follow her binding method on every quilt I make, including the part where she said to use washable glue! Trust me...it's worth it! Your binding will shine with the rest of the quilt.

Well, I hope you enjoyed quilting along with me. This has been a great experience. Again, thanks to Faith at Fresh Lemons for letting me use my design that came out of her Quilt Mock-up tutorial.

Now, time to finish up my blocks for her Summer Sampler Series !