Quilting ... sort of

I titled this "Quilting ... sort of'" as I didn't do traditional quiting for two projects recently.

The first project I worked on yesterday was the table runner from the Bent Pieces class I took with Debbie Bowles. As I was contemplating how to quilt it I realized that I didn't have enough fabric from the original fabrics to do a traditonal binding. I had seen a process called 'birthing a quilt' and decided to try it out. 'Birthing a quilt' is like making a pillow cover. In this case I quilted the front to some fusible fleece. I then put the front and the back of the quilt right side together, sewed it all up, leaving a gap for turning. Turned it righ side out, top stitched around the sides a couple of times and Viola!

The strange thing about this is that I thought this project would join the 'good ideas gone wrong' pile because of the busyness of the prints. It turns out that one of the colors in the table runner actually matches the color of my dining room walls. This may end up high on the wall over the Japanese wood block prints. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I also completed a wheelchair quilt top to give to the local guild for distribution at the Houston Veterans' Hospital. This time I decided to do a traditional birthing. This is done by taking the front and back of the quilt and putting them right sides together. Then you put the wrong side of one of them onto a piece of batting cut the same size. I sewed the three pieces together around the outside edge, leaving a gap on one side for turning. Turned it right side out, with the batting inside, and sewed up the turning gap. I then top stitched around the edges a couple of times to crisp up the edges, making sure that the turning gap was well camoflaged. I still needed to quilt the layers together so the batting would not pull apart when the quilt is washed. Most people seem to use yarn or floss, tied into knots, every 4 - 6" around the quilt. Buttons are a good option as well. I used the button attaching stitch on my machine to quilt the quilt. After washing the quilt, this is how the quilt turned out:

The pattern is super simple. The quilt turned out to be 36" x 45", the ideal size for not catching in the wheels of the chair. I can't find the pattern on-line but it is essentially a nine patch, simplified.

For this size quilt, without any extra fabric for binding or backing you need about 3/4 yard of each of two different fabrics. Cut eight 3 1/2" strips, from selvage to selvage, from each fabric. Using three strips of each fabric, contruct two sets of new fabric, one that is ABA and the other BAB (A represents one fabric, B the other) with th long sides joing to eahc other. Cut these lengths into 3 1/2" widths. Cut the remaining stips into 9 1/2" lengths and join them to the two color lengths you cut, so that the exterior of the blocks will be color A, as a for instance, and the interior will be fabric B. The blocks come out to be about 9 1/2" square, unfinished, to finish at 9". If necessary you can cut them down a little if your edges are a little uneven. Alternate the blocks in the quilt top with four across the top and five down the length. Cool, right?

So I did quilt .. sort of. I think I am going to play with this method of finishing quilts a few more times until I am comfortable with it. It certainly makes the whole process of finisihing a quilt go quickly.

I wonder if the Quilt Police will approve?