Finish to Start

Hmm, WordPress has changed my font, Okay then.

I finished the quilting on Grassy Creek yesterday. I am a little unhappy with it though. The quilt top wasn’t as square as I thought it was. The lines of quilting came up a little short on the right side as I progressed down the quilt. When I started, I trimmed all the rows at one time, which works on square quilts. When doing the layout on the computer it’s a bit easier too. I usually try to go over the edges by about an inch, that way the design looks like it goes to the edge and the stitching ends are covered in the binding. The OTHER way to do an all-over Panto is to trim it row by row. It’s sort of like the difference between rotary cutting and scissor cutting quilt pieces. I am thinking of trimming the outside border squares, so that the straight stitches are covered by the binding. That’ll make those outer patches look like they are 1 inch, instead of two.

The upper right photo is how it “should” look.

After I removed GC from the frame I measured and cut the pink minky and pinned it to the leaders. That’s my start, today I’ll get the tops on and start quilting. It’s like assembly line quilting, right? Plenty more quilts in this line. These two tops, the Irish chain Mia Charro Forest Friends tops, are going to be quilted side to side. I set them up next to each other and make the machine quilt across both. Same panto, with a two inch space in between. It’s very efficient, but it does require a bit more watching when the machine gets to the spot in the middle of the two. You have to watch that the foot stays on top of the quilt, and doesn’t get caught underneath. Bad things can happen, and with minky, it can be difficult to remove errant stitches with out leaving a mark.

Which reminds me of something I wanted to post about. When I was piecing the backing for the large tee shirt quilt, I was using some strips of burgundy in-between the navy to make it wider. There was a bit of stitching on the burgundy that I had to remove so I could use it. The was a very visible line in the fluff left after the threads were cut out. I was thinking about how, when making a stuffed toy, one must (can)pull the fluff out of the seam lines with a needle or stiletto to make it look better. I didn’t feel like carefully doing this with the minky though. I came up with a different technique, a soft tooth brush. I found that brushing the area with the grain and then against it, actually helped to erase the stitch lines.