Good morning. I am up and around earlier than I expected so thought I would get todays posting done so you can see the suggestions I have for finishing or changing your quilt.
If you haven't read Wednesday's post, you may still want to do that as I have a couple of quilting hints in it.
Top stitching: one of the problems that people have with quilting is deciding how to do the top stitching. I am certainly not an expert. My quilts tend to be either stitch in the ditch, shadow quilted or stippled with the majority being the last method. For this quilt, however, I found that diagonal stitching works quite nice. I started in the top upper left corner square and following an imaginary line across to the bottom right, I stitched diagonally from point to point across each square. Because the quilt is a rectangle, you will end up on the right side, fifth square from the bottom. I moved over four inches and repeated the process going in the opposite direction ensuring I was going from square corner point to square corner point.
I did not include the borders in this part although, of course, you can. Because my quilt has kitties on it, I cut out a template of a cat and am going to trace that around the border and stitch. You could do this for whatever theme you chose.
Another top stitching method you might like to try relates to the border stitching I just mentioned. Sometimes you can find some very simple pictures in a child's colouring book that can be used as templates. If I wanted to stay with the cat theme, I could have found a large picture of a cat, made a template and traced it onto the quilt top. I then would have top stitched the quilt following the traced lines.
To difficult to mark the top of your quilt? Use the back. You can trace your pattern on the back of the quilt and then sew. Remember, if necessary, to change your thread so that your top stitching colour is in the bobbin.
Changing the quilt size. This is a very easy pattern to adapt. You can add more rows vertically and/or horizontally. You can increase or decrease the block size.
Did you use any variations in your quilt? If so, tell me what they were or, better yet, send a photo. I would like to show off your quilts so please send pictures.
Next month, I am going to have some ideas for quick or last minute gift making. In January, I will be posting something completely different that I hope you all will enjoy. (May do it earlier if I can't wait!) And, if you liked doing the mystery quilt, let me know. I would be pleased to do another one in the New Year.
Blessings.
No comments:
Post a Comment