Sewing Lessons - part 4

Misaya came over on the weekend to work on her quilt some more. The next step was hand stitching the binding onto the back of the quilt.

I had some quilt binding to sew down too, so we sat on the couch and watched Rattatouille while stitching the binding.



Look at how neat her stitching is. And can you see the spot where the binding is pieced - she had a go at matching the stripes and did pretty well for a first try!

Sewing Lessons - part 3

The other evening Misaya came over for another sewing date to work on her quilt.

She promptly got to work finishing off her lines of quilting, which were triumphantly completed very quickly

Then onto the scary stage of trimming the quilt top...

... ready to attach the binding...

...including learning how to do mitered corners.

Now all the machine sewing is done - just a bit of hand sewing left and it'll be finished!

Sewing Lessons - part 2

Late last week Misaya came over for the evening and we had our second session of teaching her how to sew. After triumphantly completing her quilt top last time, this second session was devoted to basting and starting the quilting.

After a discussion of the merits of different basting methods we set to work pin basting her quit (mainly chosen due to the tools available at the time rather than anything else!). We also discussed quilting designs and settled on straight lines approx 1/4" away from each seam line, so when basting we tried to make sure that all the pins were about an inch away from the seam lines so that she wouldn't have to remove them as she quilted.

We seriously over pinned (using nearly all my pins, which should be enough for a double sized quilt!), but better to be safe than sorry eh!

Then it was onto the quilting. We had decided the quilting should be about 1/4" away from the seamlines as it would be much more forgiving to a slight wiggle than trying to stitch in the ditch (ie along the seamline).

Our evening was interrupted by a trip to the pub for some goodbye drinks for a dear friend and colleague, so she didn't get as much done as we would have liked, but she did get about 1/3 of the quilting done before heading home.

Sewing Lessons - part 1

One of my friends Misaya has been considering having a go at quilting for a while but was convinced that she wouldn't be able to do it. I was convinced she would, so I persuaded her to let me try and show her. After discussing various quilt designs and their suitability for beginners we decided on a strip quilt.

Last Saturday we headed on over to GJs to pick out the fabrics. We picked out the ones pictured above. The animal print at the top right was to be our "feature fabric", and then picked out a fabric to coordinate with each of the main colours in the fabric (down the right hand side). The stripes down the middle will be the binding, and the backing is shown on the left and is a lovely yellow flannelette.

Misaya informed me that she had no sewing experience whatsoever, so we started with the basics, step by step in the process. First was cutting the strips. I showed Misaya how to use a rotary cutter (including the important safety warnings!), and after a bit of practice on some scraps of fabric she cut her fabric each into two strips (of deliberately uneven size).

After choosing the order of the strips it was business time - sewing them together!

Again, after some practice on a scrap of fabric (above) it was onto the real thing! Misaya was a VERY fast learner and her seam was super straight. Here's her first ever seam:

First the strips were sewn into pairs, the pairs into 4s and so on until it was all one piece. A little pressing later and she had a quilt top!

That's where we stopped for day one (a fantastic achievement for anybody, let alone a beginner!). Stay tuned for Misaya's progress on this one, I think it's going to look great.