Cheryl's Quilt - Finished!

I am so happy to announce that Cheryl's quilt is finally finished (read the story of this quilt HERE). It's only been about a year... Feel like the quilt whisperer...after some agonizing when first confronted with her quilt, which was pretty much ruined, I bit the bullet and undid most of it. This involved

• taking the entire quilt apart - that was a huge job!
• taking all of the borders of and getting rid of one border
• cutting some width of the borders to straighten them
• undoing the center of the quilt top and re-sewing it
• squaring off the quilt top
• re- joining the strips of the inner border
• reinforcing some of the seams in the quilt and re-sewing some seams altogether
• substituting one strip of the outer border with a new piece (luckily Cheryl had some leftover fabric) to get rid of a tear
• blocking the quilt and managing to get 1/4inch in width on top and bottom
• sewing and attaching a new binding.

This is what it looked like before

Sorry, the photo is not that great. The quilt had puckers galore, some tears, the quilting design was just awful and the stitching quite bad...it just looked really bad.

The quilting design that was used

 The end result of the rejuvenation

Texture of the quilting

The finished quilt

Luckily, Cheryl had given me complete artistic license to do what I wanted with it. She did not care much for this quilt...not entirely sure whether this was true as the fabric was just beautiful and of really high quality (except for the white...I think that must have been an add-on as it behaved entirely different when stitching over it). I felt it was a pity...I actually really liked this quilt and the colours she had chosen. However, let me tell you, cutting into this quilt did not feel good at all...I had visions of completely stuffing it up and some anxiety around whether this would turn out at all and the thought that this was not my quilt always hung over me (as I do on occasions make those inexplicable mistakes that render projects UFOs...in the department of "oops that did not work!").

Anyway this turned out really nice. The dense quilting is hiding most of the imperfections as the eye is drawn to the texture rather than the detail. Learned heaps from it and actually was reminded of some fundamentals in quilting. The one thing that Cheryl did very well was the outer border. She cut this on the lengthwise grain which is absolutely correct. When I first started quilting I did that a couple of times as well, however than got a bit more lazy and started cutting it on the crosswise grain. Sewing the binding onto this quilt, Cheryl's outer border was absolutely flat and beautiful to sew and it reminded me to maybe pay a bit more attention to my work and starting to cut the borders on the lengthwise grain again...it made such a difference.

Overall, it turned out pretty straight...I was quite surprised by that as the middle continued to remain a bit bulged out. When I was blocking it I had a variance of about 1/2inch on top and bottom, but managed to stretch it down to about 1/4inch. Also was a good exercise in challenging that perfectionism of mine. When I attached the binding, I had to accept that this would not be entirely straight, so stopped fussing and just attached the binding and I must say, this turned out absolutely beautiful...better than on some of my other quilts where I fussed over the straightness.

Let's just hope that she will like it and more importantly, use it.

Karin

Cheryl's quilt - Update

Well, my idea of using my Sensormatic FMQ foot was an epic fail. Had I thought about it a bit more, it would have been obvious that this was not the right foot to use. Had a bit of a 'duh' moment ...

Anyway I started off and the foot was gliding over the quilt until it hit the first major intersection where several seams meet. Could not negotiate this, so I altered the pivot height to 1 and then to 2...more mucking around. Finally I set it to 3 to get over all those humps and bumps, but then the thread started to break a couple of times. When I thought about it, this made sense...this foot does not raise and lower with every stitch when going fast and while going over an even surface this is fine, but with Cheryl's quilt there were issues of bulk at the intersections and also some bulging out over certain areas...this was not going to work with this foot.  As I lowered the speed to avoid the thread breaking, it started pushing the fabric too much for my liking. Not sure whether these problems were just due to this quilt or whether this is a problem in general. 

After one row of pain, I switched over to the Dynamic FMQ foot and off I went. I quilted half the quilt in 5 hours...no thread breakages and no issues with the bulk. I must say, stippling remains one of my favourite designs. I know that it probably is a bit boring but for this quilt I was really grateful that I chose this design.  I never noticed this before but stippling is the design to go to when you want to quilt out some problems. I was able to adjust my meander as I needed to get rid of some bulk, turning in the opposite direction to pull the fabric down a bit, then going for some sharp turns to even it out a bit. Or, on occasions when I could see some suspicious fullness coming up, I just made my meanders a bit bigger and more generous...I was very impressed with how well this worked. I quilted the top fairly densely to cover the seams, as Cheryl had sewn the seams with a wider stitch which had become precariously loose in some parts.  Also managed to go over some holes, so this baby is not going to come undone.

Action!

About 1/2inch scale meander

Several hours later

Linking up to Let's Bee Social Over at Lorna's Sew Fresh Quilts

Karin

Cheryl's Quilt

Remember Cheryl's quilt? You can read about it HERE . This goes back to last year...bit of a disaster.

I spent quite some time undoing it and then analyzing what the problem might be. Apart from the shocking longarm job for which Cheryl unfortunately paid good money, there were several problems with straightness and how she put it together. I ended up taking the borders off, re-doing the center seam, reinforcing some wonky seams, eliminating one border, fixing up some holes and sewing it back together again. See HERE for a before and after shot.  Unfortunately last year I had to stop at this point due to a health issue and after that other projects somewhat overtook this quilt.


So I finally knuckled down to pin baste Cheryl's quilt ready for quilting this morning.

Was a bit nervous about this as the quilt is not entirely straight and bulges out in the middle a bit...however this turned out well and it is laying very nice and flat

 
So, on with the show...I am ready to FMQ this. Initially I thought I would FMQ some motifs or similar, however looking at it now and re-evaluating, I decided to meander all over it. The reason for this is that I actually only got about an inch and half on two of the sides, so heavy quilting is probably not a good idea as I cannot predict with certainty how much it will shrink (and the batting is wool which has a bit of puff to it).

I am going to use my Sensormatic FMQ foot for this...wanted to have a bit of a play with this foot for a while

It is very unobtrusive and open in the front, so visibility is very good. On the Pfaff 4.2 (as on the Pfaff 4.0) you have a special Sensormatic FMQ setting for this (as opposed to the Springloaded setting). Have not used this that much..at low speed this foot will raise and lower with each stitch to hold the fabric on the stitch plate. At higher speed, this foot starts gliding over the surface of your quilt as you gather speed...so it is ideal to use for designs where you need to have a bit more speed. With more speed of course, you need to be wary to stay in control of your stitching, so this should be interesting to give this a workout. Had a bit of a play this afternoon...good fun.

I am on a mission to finish this by next week...will then need to hunt around for some binding though as Cheryl had cut her binding on the long grain which would have amplified the bulging out of the quilt, so I don't really want to re-attach this.

Anyway, that's all from me today. Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin

Cheryl's Quilt - Putting it all Together Again

Finally got around to continuing on Cheryl's quilt. If you missed the story around this please click HERE.

Well, I literally undid most of the quilt. The issue started with the finished quilt top, i.e. it was not squared off properly. Once I had removed all the borders and done an initial squaring off, I looked at it again. Got a bit nervous re cutting as this is not my quilt and I had visions of completely messing it up. When I looked at it again I realised that I was not going to get it straight unless I undid the centre seam as this was somewhat crooked....so, undid this too and sewed it back together again and that did the trick. The quilt top was as square as I was going to get it.

After that I re-attached the purple/reddish border ...no problems here other than that some of the fabric had frayed as I had washed the strips (and starched the hell out of them). If you have followed this you would notice that I got rid of a narrow  inner pink border. I did ask Cheryl re this and she did not mind, but I just could not face dealing with a narrow, frayed strip of material. Anyway, also fixed Cheryl's method of sewing strips together...instead of a vertical seam, I was able to attach the strips with a 45 degree seam and was able to place it in a way that I got rid of one of those tiny holes that were present. Very pleased with myself at this point.

 

Now the next border (pieced strips of fabric) was very tricky...in sewing them together Cheryl must not have looked at the straightness of the strips after sewing them together. When ironed out, I realised that they were bowed and had a good 1/4inch variance in them. So out came the cutter again...this felt quite brutal but I trimmed them by 1/4 inch to straighten them out and this worked fine.

As I was on a roll, I also re-attached the outer green borders. Similar issue with accuracy so I also trimmed these by 1/4 inch. Also noticed that Cheryl left the selvage in one of the border strips (they were cut on the lengthwise grain). For any new quilter out there...selvage edges always get removed, even when sewing little pieces together as they have a different density to the rest of the fabric and hence can pull the fabric in and possibly create some ripples. I trimmed some of this off but given that it runs the entire length of the border I am left with half of the selvage edge on the binding side.

As Cheryl had some fabric left over, I was able to replace the one strip with the major hole in the outer green border with a new strip. Was very happy with that as I did not have a clue on how to fix that hole.

So I am at the basting stage ...only need to attend to some holes in the backing fabric.



Before

After - with inner border removed

In terms of quilting I am not sure what best to do with this. You can see that the quilt top is bowing out a bit in the middle which is further enhanced by the lengthwise cut borders (I cut my borders on the crosswise grain...I think it just has that added give in the borders). Given that the matching of the intersections is a bit out on most of the seams I am not sure whether I can quilt this in-the-ditch (of course you can, but that would involve major hassle with constantly breaking thread). In order to do any motif quilting, I would have to do some stitching-in-the ditch first to stabilise the quilt. Hmm...one could be radical and quilt-in-the-ditch freehand...that could work but not sure I want to do that. Will wait with decision around this until after the basting. The basting should give me a good idea on how the quilt feels and behaves...that should give me some clues. If it appears that stitching-in-the ditch might be too troublesome, I will do an overall design (stipple?) on the quilt.

Also need to find some binding fabric. Cheryl had cut the binding strips also on the lengthwise grain and that created additional problems with this quilt. I am going to get just matching solid green material and replace this.

Anyway, that's where I am up to....linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Until next time

Karin

Cheryl's quilt - update

 

Feel like the quilt whisperer...did a bit more work on Cheryl's quilt. For those of you who missed my earlier posts, her quilt was a bit messed up in terms of its quilting, so I undid it all with the intention of re-quilting it.

 

 

As you can see I have taken all the borders off. The problem that I encountered was that the borders (4 of them) were just not sitting right. Initially I only took off two of them but quickly realised that the original issue is with the quilt top itself...just not straight, hence every consecutive border produced a larger discrepancy leading to very wavy borders and a quilt top that was bulging out.

 

I dislike pin-basting at the best of times and just could not face the struggle to put it back together again with those issues. Next task is to straighten it out...

 

I think this is going to be a bit of a long process, however, once I have straightened it out as best as I can we are on our way (I hope). Thinking I might just have to stipple it...

 

 

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin

Cheryl's Quilt- some progress

Well, took the quilt home and got some unpicking done...actually unpicked the whole lot as I got curious about what I would find. In case you missed this, I talked about the disaster around Cheryl's quilt HERE. She had it quilted by a longarm quilter and it was truly terrible, so we decided to take it all off and re-do it.

Quilt before binding came off

You can already see in the photo above that there is a problem with the borders...as you can see the body of the quilt is actually crinkling in the borders. In fact there is too much quilt...the whole thing produced a bit of a 1/2 inch fold on all sides...

So, off with the binding...



After binding was removed

Much better, but I think I was right ...the borders are not attached properly and the whole thing is wavy. Also, some suspicious fullness in the right upper part of the quilt, so my guess is, there is already a problem with the inner border.



The back

Now the back was interesting. I thought I could do some repair work around the seams, however that is only going to be possible along the major seams (I think).  The other thing I noticed is that Cheryl used at least stitch length 3- 4 to sew the seams. Just in case there are new quilters who read this...you need to use stitch length 2 - 2.5 to sew the seams. Anything bigger then that is too loose and makes your whole quilt more fragile...initially I thought I might give this a rinse through however after seeing that, that is not going to be an option...

Washed the back instead and hung the batting outside to have some wind blowing through to fluff it up  a bit again.

Bit undecided now...I am thinking that the 2 borders need to come off. I measured it and there is some variation around the whole quilt (by as much as 1/2 inch and a little bit more here and there). I think we might be ok with the first pieced border...the centre, including the first pieced border, comes to about 55 1/2 inches all around. Once I take the other two off I could square the quilt top off and re-attach the other borders...I need this to be lying flat in order to stitch along the ditch around the major seams, otherwise this would become a nightmare to do (as it obviously did for the longarm quilter). Alternatively one could stipple over the whole lot and be done with it. While it would come out ok, the whole quilt would be crooked and I am risking major puckers all over the place as the top is bigger than the borders that surround it.

Ironed it a bit and trialled using some starch to get rid of the sewing marks...yep, that works fine and will help to stabilise the whole thing.

People probably think I am a bit crazy for doing this , but this is somebody's work and it would have taken some time to put together. The fabric is gorgeous and would not have been cheap. The design is beautiful and the whole quilt looks very nice even though some of the seams are not matching up. I am a seasoned quilter...it does not take much for me to take of the borders and re-attach them a bit better (and no, it still will not come out perfect). I do think we should value some of our earlier attempts at quilting. I still got my very first quilt which looks absolutely hideous, but I still remember feeling thrilled to bits that I actually managed to put it together. With that in mind, I decided to tackle this...not exactly sure re the quilting. I will wait and see how this will turn out first.

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin