Annies Crazy World

 
 
 
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    This is Annie Whitsed's Crazy World a world where I stitch the joys and chaos of life into beautifull crazy quilts. email annie@loopylace.com
February 2006
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Part 7 – More about attaching borders February 10th, 2006

Before pinning the top and bottom borders I check that the side borders are square at the ends…you may have noticed that I do a lot of checking of measuremnets and angles, that is because I like the accuracy and it is easier to check and get it right the first time than it is to unpick and resew.

checking that border is square

Position the border on the quilt right sides together and when pinning work from the centre out towards the ends…When looking at the photos in my last post you may have noticed that as well as the guideline for the border I also marked the stitching line on the back of the lining, I have marked the stitching line because the quilt is now very heavy, even with the ironing board supporting the weight, it pulls and gets caught making the guide on the sewing machine difficult to follow and as the lining is easy to draw on it becomes easier to stitch along a marked line.

stitching line marked on lining

Detail of the corner with the lining and first border on.

the corner

And so All that Jazz has its first border.

quilt with the first border

*At this stage I again deviated from what I would Normally do…Normally I would add the remaining border, stitching the sides on first and then the top and bottom…with the quilt top finished I spread out the backing the batting and the quilt top to make the quilt sandwich…And then to hold the layers together, I stitch through beads and hide stitches under embellishments….works for me on my quilts but on the back the stitches are randomly placed and the back is not pretty and all that Jazz deserves a pretty back.

I also have the problem of the weight differential with heavily embellished blocks being next to lightly embellsihed blocks….When I was telling my sister why I was constructing it the way I am, I was talking about weight bearing seams and stress points and she said that it sounded like I was a Quilt Engineer, I thought that it sounded like a good title so next post will be Part 8 – Quilt Engineering…

Part 6 – Borders to Frame All that Jazz February 10th, 2006

For the borders I needed to do a shopping trip…It was before I had stitched the blocks together so I pinned them to a piece of fabric and rolled them around a tube so that I could take them to the shop without loosing or crushing any of the blocks….My friend Lynne came with me to the fabric shop where we had fun auditioning fabrics for the borders and showing the blocks of to the staff who loved them and offered suggestions of what they liked as the borders…

I thought that purple would be the colour for the borders but I never know what will be just right for any quilt until I lay the quilt next to them so we set about auditioning colours…we tried Purple, burgundy, some greens, blues and even a gold…Purple was the best of them all but even it looked a bit flat and dull and did nothing to enhance the blocks which are so colourfull, vibrant and full of life…How to give the border some zing?…I actually knew the answer as I posed the question, my sister had given it to me, when she first saw the blocks layed out, she suggested that a narrow border of green would look good, specifically the green that Valeri used in her block…a few more bolts of fabric were dragged out and she was right, The Purple with a narrow green border Frames the blocks as they deserve to be framed…somehow the narrow green border pulls the blocks together and makes them sing.

We had the quilt blocks on the shop counter when started auditioning the fabrics but when it became to cluttered with bolts of fabric we overflowed onto the floor.

auditioning fabrics for border

To complete the Border on a crazy quilt you also need some lining/foundation fabric…having to line the border is a bit tedious but needs to be done because the border needs the extra substance of the lining to balance/support the thickness and weight of the crazy quilt blocks…without the extra support of the lining the borders are more likely to be dragged down by the weight of the crazy quilt blocks making them sag and look floppy…so it is worth taking the extra trouble to line the borders.

Normally to attach the border and lining I would place the border right sides together with the quilt edge and then place the lining on top of the border and pin the 3 layers together…If you have trouble keeping the raw edges of the 3 layers together you may prefer to stitch the border on with a slightly smaller seam allowance and then add the lining and stitch the seam again using the full 1/2 seam allowance.

Sandwich border fabric between block and lining

As I said that is what I would normally do but it is not what happened with this border…The Purple is Duponi Silk, a firm easy to sew fabric But the green is the stuff of nightmares…I chose it because it was the colour I wanted but the fabric itself is a polyester, its soft and flimsy, slippery and the crinkles in it make it impossible to cut a straight strip from it (I ended up drawing a thread to get a straight edge to work with)…and most problimatic of all, when I did an test iron, the crinkles ironed out…

iron test

I needed to be able to iron the borders but didn’t want to lose the crinkles….it took me a few days of thinking to work out how I could keep the crinkles and still be able to iron the borders while putting them on, turned out to be the lining that gave me my solution…Because this is not a common problem I considered not explaining the detail of what I did but when I got it finished I realized that it was probably a good technique for adding any narrow border because there is more chance of small slippages when you are trying to keep 3 raw edges lined up, small slippages are not noticeable to the eye on a wide border but a small slippage on 1/2 inch border is noticable.

I cut strips of calico (muslin in USA) the width of the total border and marked a guide line 1 1/2 inches (width of the border plus seams) from the edge of the lining.

marking guide line onto lining

I placed the edge of the green fabric on the guide line and pinned it in place.

place edge of fabric on guide line and pin

To prevent the machine from disturbing the crinkles I placed a piece of lunch wrap paper over the green fabric and pinned it in place…this step can be skipped when their are no crinkles in the fabric.

I covered the seam with paper

Stitch close to the raw edge of the border fabric.

stitch close to the raw edge

Turn the piece over and stitch close the the raw edge of the lining fabric.

turn over and stitch near edge of lining

I then removed the paper…this is the same technique as I will use to remove the paper from the back of the blocks.

crease fabric along seam line tear paper along perferations the other side will pull from seam

I cut the border fabric level with the raw edge of the lining…

cut border fabric level with edge of lining

leaving me with a border strip ready to be stitched to the blocks.

the border ready to stitch onto the quilt

I have the 2 side borders stitched on.

side borders stitched on

Next post Part 7 – More about attaching borders.