Tag Archives: machine binding

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I initially bought this yard and a half of fabric about ten years ago, figuring that it would be fun to quilt as a wholecloth quilt and thinking I would do that on my domestic machine, an early 80's Viking 6690. Fast forward to when I got my new longarm setup, an Innova M20. I had rented time on a longarm prior to purchasing my own machine, but I still seemed to be a little bit intimidated and I was struggling with which quilt top to load onto the machine.

Then I ran across this fabric, reminded of my plan to quilt it as a wholecloth quilt. This seemed like less of a risk, less chance of messing up a pieced top. I loaded it on the machine and got to work.

I'm most excited about using my longarm for hand-guided free motion quilting. I chose not to get a computer for the machine. I loved the variety of designs in this print and enjoyed playing with different motifs for different sections of the design. I especially liked the two different border designs. I loaded the fabric onto my longarm so I could quilt across a whole border in my first pass.

It is not without a few thread problems on the back, but I'm overall very happy with how it came out. I enjoyed trying a variety of quilting motifs. Here you can really see the texture of the quilting on the back (green) and all those asterisk shapes along the edge were on the second border (see the front of the quilt top in the bottom of that image).

I chose Kona Hibiscus solid for the binding. I used the selvage edge of the quilt top to guild my color choice for the binding.

It is machine bound (see my tutorial for how I do it!) and topstitched with Aurifil 50wt Very Dark Eggplant (#1240).

Not the best photo. (I swear it's a rectangle!) My finished quilt is about 40" x 52". It's one of five quilts I'll have on display in the San Mateo County Fair exhibitions hall this month.

Check out my other finish from May. (It's going to the fair too.)

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About a year ago I participated in the I Spy book release blog hop by making these two quilt blocks from the book. Each is a paper pieced block in which I chose to use solid fabrics.

It is season 13 of Project QUILTING and as much as I love to participate, I really have been focusing on finishing works in progress. I'd convinced myself that instead of participating in this season's one week quilt challenges by conceiving, starting, and completing a quilt in a week (for each of the six challenges) I would choose a WIP from the pile to complete that would fulfill the challenge theme (for an unofficial finish for the challenge). When the All the Colors challenge was announced on January 2, I scanned the list of WIPs and sussed out what would work for "All the Colors." The description had indicated that the quilt needed to use "at least five colors" so I chose my burger block to finish for the week.

Well, then my FOMO took over and I decided to make a little ATC mini quilt as an official submission for PQ 13.1. And the burger and watermelon blocks remained on the table.

Fast forward to last week, our week off between PQ challenge weeks. I decided to go ahead with my plan to finish up these mini quilts. I'd always envisioned finishing them as round quilts like the food is on a plate. They'll be going to my niece and nephew who are still of the "play food" age.

I knew I needed a bias binding to bind my round quilts, but was unsure if I could pull it off with machine binding or if that would be a struggle. With Cassandra's encouragement, I went for it and the machine binding went very smoothly.

Each of my quilts finished at 8" in diameter. The burger is quilted in Aurifil 50wt Toast (#6010), Red (#2250), Yellow (#2135), Chocolate (#2360), Very Dark Grass Green (#2890), and White (#2024). And the watermelon is quilted in Aurifil 50wt Red (#2250), Green (#2870), Black (#2692), and White (#2024).

Thanks for visiting. If it's not on your radar, there's still time to make a quilt for this week's Project QUILTING challenge.

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Four years ago this week, I took an improv piecing workshop with Karen Foster of Capitola Quilter. She taught Improv Abstraction, using two methods of improv curves, for the workshop with Bay Area Modern. In my #99DaysofWIPs this summer I focused on projects that had been started in quilt workshops such as this one.

I used the remaining solids in these two colors, Kona Pewter and Nautical, to fill in and add to the blocks I'd created in the workshop.

I added smooth curve walking foot quilting, inspired by my recent walking foot class with Jacquie Gering. I started with a smooth curve across the quilt and then echoed that curve with more walking foot quilting. On the other side of the initial curve I created two sections and similarly echoed the gentle curves to fill the space.

I'm making an effort to us fabric from my stash, so I chose a yard of grey Moda Grunge fabric from my stash for the backing and a grey and white print for my binding. I machine bound the quilt. This baby quilt finishes at approximately 29" x 29".

Me daughter assisted me for a quick photo shoot at the park. I chose the orientation of the first three blocks I pieced (in the lower right center), because they reminded me of an AT-AT from Star Wars.

Have you tried smooth curves with a walking foot?

Thanks for visiting!