I've had a bunch of quilt tops ready to be quilted for quite some time. Most of them have been sitting around for almost a year, and one is almost two years old. I like the actual quilting - well mostly - and don't really mind the binding, but I hate crawling around on the floor and basting.
Except for a few pillows, I've always used safety pins, but a friend finally convinced me to try out the basting spray. I had visions of the quilt, batting, and back bunching up and sticking together all over the place. I could just imagine all the layers being stuck to me with me going in circles to try to detach it like a dog chasing it's tail. I even had visions of myself and/or the quilt being hopelessly stuck to the floor.
But I took it easy with the spray, and it actually went pretty well. I laid everything out on the floor, so there was still a fair bit of crawling around. My friend recommended laying everything out on a table, but I was too worried about getting sticky stuff all over my table. I have one of those plastic-y Home Depot ones in my basement. Maybe I'll dig that out and try it next time.
It wasn't a very fancy quilt or even a very big quilt, but I wanted to make it simple to show off the cute little Aneela Hooey designs. I had managed to snag a charm pack before the yardage came out of her first collection.
I ended up quilting it simply, too. I just machine-stitched my sewing machine foot width away from each seam. I ended up going back and forth between my walking foot and my regular foot. I've used my walking foot in the past, and it really hasn't done anything for me. There are a few places where I ended up with a pucker in the fabric (frustration!), and I almost think the walking foot made that worse. I plan to use the same quilting for my Heather Ross quilt, so I hope I can figure this out before then.
In hindsight, the solid blue binding wasn't the best idea. There are some squares of the same blue in the quilt which, afterwards, I remembered placing strategically next to the non-blue squares, so it wouldn't clash with the other blues that weren't similar enough or contrast-y enough. Oh well, it's such a light blue that I think you don't really notice the binding that much and can just focus on the quilt.
This time I did try machine binding. I used this tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts, and it worked out great. It takes me forever to hand bind a quilt - even a small one. This was so much faster and still looks very nice.
I don't know if it was the simple quilting or the all-cotton batting that I used, but I love the softness and drapy-ness of this quilt. The other ones that I've made and quilted with all-over stippling have seemed much more stiff.
I ended up giving this quilt to my mother for her birthday. I know the Aneela Hooey fabric is probably considered a juvenile print, and the colors in the quilt are kind of baby-ish, but my mom had said she liked the colors when she saw the quilt top months ago. She seemed to like it.
Anyway, it was a good quilting experience. I might just get inspired enough, brave enough to do another one.







