Friday, November 30, 2012

NOVEMBER FREE MOTION QUILTING CHALLENGE AND MACHINE BINDING

I almost gave up on myself this month.  Yes, I almost didn't do my quilting challenge.  It has been a busy month and yesterday I was just plain tired.  

However, today is another day!  So I decided to do it.  I didn't practice as much as I should have.  I don't have any really imaginative quilting like some other people do, but I will say that I really appreciate sewcalgal for hosting the challenge all year.  And I appreciate the expert quilters, like Sarah Vedeler who were willing to share there expertise with us.  The tutorial definitely is helpful in giving us a great method to follow.   So, here are my samples.



In my last post I blogged about the two donation quilts that I finished.  I forgot to mention that I bound them by machine.  Pat Sloan has an excellent tutorial on how to do the machine binding and you can get to it here.  I pretty much followed the directions to a "T".  Except, when I went to put the binding onto the girl's quit, I sewed it to the front instead of the back.  So, since I had followed Pat's directions about ironing the binding down 1/4", I was able to still stitch the blanket stitch from the front while folding under the binding as I went.  Luckily, it turned out OK.  (I was too lazy to take out the stitching since I was over half way before I realized that I had sewn in on the wrong side).
Front view of girl's quilt.

Back view of girl's quilt.

This picture shows both the front view and back view of the boy's quilt.
Thanks for the tutorial, Pat.  It really saved me a lot of time and for a quilt that might get a lot of use, this binding will work fine.

8 comments:

  1. Your binding looks terrific. I've tried to do mine by machine before and it looked horrible. I may have to revisit that again.

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  2. I think your swirls look good. I didn't practice as much as I should have, either.
    That binding looks really good. I wish I had the blanket stitch on my machine. It would sure be helpful to bind this way on quilts that will see a lot of wear and tear!

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  3. Your spirals look wonderful! The binding too! I've got to find time to check out both tutorials. Looking forward to the 15th! ---"Love"

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  4. I think your swirls are wonderful. Actually makes me want to give FMG a try!

    Liri

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  5. Your swirls look great! They're hard for me too, but I love them so much I've gotten pretty good at them - at least when they're bigger - I'd bet yours are too small for me to manage that well! And the bindings look great.

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  6. Your FMQ looks so good! I'm jealous but I just need to sit down and practice. Things here are crazy busy right now so I don't know when I will have time. You did a great job with them!

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  7. Your spirals are great< I left mine to the last minute too and do appreciate all the tutors and tutorials we've had this year. I've never tried binding by machine but it does seem that one can get a very tidy result - thanks for the link!

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  8. Hi Ruth! I'm so far behind on comments! Your donation quilts are wonderful!! And I will be linking up to see how to machine quilt the binding!! Thanks for the tip!!

    Like all of you, your FMQ is amazing and inspiring!! Thanks for sharing!

    Blessings

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