Picking up where you left off

Bunting Quilt on the 6 foot New English Quilter frame

One of the great features about our New English Quilter frames is the ability to pick up right where you left off. I was working on this quilt over a year ago. I needed to make room for a Demo so I took it off the 6 foot frame and put it to one side. I used it as a teaching tool to show how important it is to add side-sashing strips on the quilt top so that there is a place to get the tension working right before launching into the proper quilt.

on the left is the side-sashing strip where I sort my tension

But last week I decided to finish the Bunting quilt. So I loaded it back on the frame. Our frame tensions each layer of the quilt separately so there will be no rucks or wrinkles on the top or backing. I can pick up just where I left off whether it's 5 minutes or 5 months.

notice the undulating shape of the scalloped mussel shell background filler

 This red, white and blue Bunting Quilt began as a machine quilting sampler project. The top was easy to assemble with the bunting flags raw edge appliquéd by machine to a solid piece of fabric. the idea was to machine quilt something different in each flag giving the opportunity to try out a variety of patterns.

Each flag was outlined in scallops, then I used a scalloped mussel shell filler.

machine quilted with Kimono Silk from Superior Threads

I used Kimono Silk thread for machine quilting the various line designs and Bottom Line pre-wounds in the bobbins, all from Superior Threads.

an echoed ripple stipple line design

 This echoed ripple stipple design worked well with the blue crabs.

machine quilted with a JUKI TL98P Lockstitch machine

It was very satisfying to finally complete something that has been a WIP (work in progress) for a long time.

Appliqué on the frame

Here's a tutorial for a fun technique we used on our Valentine Postcards project. My daughter Rosie will be showing you a way to raw edge appliqué directly on the quilt while it's loaded on the frame.

First, find a space.

Next, cut out a heart from some fabric and just lay it in position. We're going to use a fine sparkly netting to hold the heart in place.

Here you can see Rosie cutting out the netting. We found that the sewing machine foot would sometimes get caught up in pointy bits of the netting, so Rosie is cutting the netting in a rounded circular shape. We found that this worked best. We could go back later and trim the netting if we wanted to.

Then Rosie stitched around the heart shape. The first outline was the trickiest. Rosie is using a red Metallic thread from Superior Threads. It added an extra sparkle to the project.

But once the netting was stitched in place, it was easy to continue stitching round the heart and adding scallops or whatever.

This was Rosie's very first effort at raw edge appliqué. Doing the appliqué directly on the frame made it fast and easy. We think that the end result looked really pretty! We can't wait to try it again with perhaps leaves and flowers for Spring or eggs for Easter.