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 11 – Tying the Quilt February 18th, 2006

the backing fabric

This is the backing fabric…A silk/cotton mix, woven with a vine and flower pattern, it is a beautiful fabric and lovely to work with…and the colour is about 2 shades darker than the narrow green border on the front making it a great backing for All that Jazz…it is a more expensive fabric than I would usually have bought for a backing and for this perfect fabric We have got to send a Huge THANK YOU to Jenny at Addicted to Fabric for Donating it, as well as the muslin for my messy back and the batting…thank you Jenny it looks wonderful.

I taped the backing to the table wrong side of fabric up.

tape backing to table

I placed the Quilt on top of the backing.

place quilt on top of lining

Put a pin near each corner and pinned around the edges.

pin near each intersection and edges

I then lifted one corner to check that the pins had gone through to the back.

Check to see that pins have gone through all layers

Time to do the tying..before I describe how I stitched the ties on this quilt….please note that the fine stitches that I have used to avoid any of my stitches showing on the front is more detailed than normally requried as most crazy quilts are tyed with buttons, ribbon bows or cross stitches at the intersections.

I don’t remember wether I mentioned that when we decided not to put buttons on the front, I decided that I would put beads on the back, I thought that they would give me a good anchor point, which they did, as well they make the back a bit different and they look good.

I did think that it would be a bit tricky to get a secure tie with such a small stitch but the bead did make a good anchor on the back and there was plenty of layers of seam for the stitches to get a good hold so I needn’t of worried…Putting the threads into the corners before putting on the back was also a good idea because I didn’t have to find the exact point to start each tie on the back.

For each tie I Put the needle straight down through the corner….

Put needle down in corner

I put a bead on the thread and re entered the fabric a beads width away…

a beads width away

and then slopped the needle back towards the corner on the front coming out in the fold of a seam from where I could go straight back down the same spot as the first time…I went through each bead 3 times.

come out in fold near corner

To secure the thread take a tiny stitch under the bead, when the thread is nearly pulled through a small loop forms close to the fabric, put your needle through the loop and then pull the thread tight.

take a tiny stitch under the bead put needle through the loop in the thread

To hide the tail of the thread run the needle through the batting for about an inch.

run tail of thread into the batting

Cut thread close to the fabric to finish.

cut thread close to fabric

Part 10 – preparing the quilt for adding the real backing February 18th, 2006

Last week we (being Sharon and I) decided not to put buttons over the corners of the blocks but that meant that I wouldn’t have anything to hide the tail of the thread under, when finishing the thread it is easy enough to run the end of the thread under the fabric but what to do with the tail of the knot when starting, the knot can be popped through some fabrics but I didn’t want to risk pulling a thread on this backing fabric, the thread can be secured by a couple of tiny back stitches but that is difficult to do when trying to keep the quilt as flat as possible and as I was planning tiny stitches on the back even the bulk of those extra stitches could make the needle more difficult to push through the layers of fabric…

…When I got to the point of getting the quilt ready to tie the back on, I realized that the messy back solved the problem…I co opted my son to thread 30 needles (the number of corners) and knot the ends, I then threaded one up through each corner so that my tie threads where in place with there knots hidden on the messy back…This is the first time that I have used a hidden messy back but it has made putting the layers together securly just so much easier that I reckon I will always use one for future quilts.

thread in corner knot on the messy back

When I put the borders on cut them wider than they would finish so when I basted the edges I basted the edges in from the edges so that when I trimmed the border to width the layers would still be held together by the basting.

trim the borders

Even though the layers where basted together I zig zagged the edges, it is an optional step which I did because the silk frays and the zig zag stops the fray so that the edge stays neat the way I like it…I only did the sides and bottom at this stage (I will tell you later why I didn’t do the top edge at this stage).

zig-zag edges