An Asian Inspired Wall Quilt - Part 4

The Final Assembly Phase

Adding the Borders

I tweaked the first border to change the straight piping to a rick-rack and like it much better.

1st rick-rack border

Having got that all squared away, it was time to put on the 2nd set of borders.  To square up the quilt, I always measure through the center of the quilt, first horizontally, and then vertically.  I also tend to apply the horizontal borders first and then the vertical ones, to give the quilt a long, slim look.  Doing it the other way makes it look shorter, somehow.

To determine the length (or width) of the borders,
measure through the center of the quilt

The border strips were cut at 1-1/2" for a finished width of 1"

Second border

and attached.  Prior to sewing them on, each border was folded in half and at the half mark, pinned to the center point of each side and along the sides of the quilt.

Quilt with second borders attached

Assembling the Layers of the Quilt

Time now to layer the quilt with the backing fabric and batting.  The black backing fabric was cut 3 inches bigger than the quilt top, and the creases were ironed out.

Backing fabric is ironed to remove creases

It was then folded in half twice and pressed to aid in the placement of the batting and quilt top.

Backing fabric folded in half twice and pressed

The same was done with the batting.

Batting

The batting is cut to the same size as the backing fabric.

The batting is cut to size

Now it's time to assemble the three layers.  The backing is taped to the table using painter's tape, and the batting, that is also folded in half twice, is placed on the right top segment of the backing.

Folded batting placed on taped backing fabric

The first fold of the batting is opened to the left.

Batting is unfolded

Then opened all the way and smoothed out over the backing fabric.

Batting is smoothed over the backing

The quilt top is aligned in the center of the batting and backing.

Quilt top is centered on batting and backing

Pinning the Layers Together

The necessary tools and equipment are laid out - brass safety pins, a little bouncy ball because I don't have a marble and a curious tool, called a Quick Klip, to help in closing the safety pins.

Tools for pinning

Here are some other tools that can be used in place of the Quick Klip - a popsicle stick, teaspoon or seam ripper.  These save your fingers from being pricked while closing the pins.

Other tools for pinning

The bouncy ball is slid under the quilt sandwich and placed in the center.  This raises the quilt off the table top and will save the surface of the table from pin pricks.

Bouncy ball raises quilt off the table top

The safety pins are left open when first inserted and then, using any one of the tools above, are closed one at a time.  The tool acts as an extra finger to avoid handling the sharp end of the safety pin with bare fingers.

Safety pin is closed using tool

Here is the fully pinned quilt.

Quilt is all pinned

Quilting the Quilt

Once the quilt is pinned, it is easily transported to the sewing machine.  In order to stabilize the quilt, it is quilted-in-the-ditch within the seams of the second borders.

Quilted-in-the-ditch within seams of borders.

I decided to quilt a cross-hatch through all three layers of the quilt.  Beginning at the diagonal, 1" painter's tape is adhered from corner to corner.  Another length of tape is applied right next to it.  This acts as the 'spacer' so that another length can be placed adjacent to it.

Painter's tape used to mark lines for cross-hatching

The 'spacer' is then moved adjacent to the most recently applied length of tape, and so on, until the entire quilt top is gridded.  The two pieces of tape in the top right corner are there because there is a tiny corner section that needs to be quilted.  Once that is done, the smallest piece of tape will be removed and the quilt top will be quilted on either side of each length of tape.  The cross-hatching will, therefore, be one inch apart.

Gridded quilt top

Here is the quilted wall hanging.

In Part 5 - The Binding and Finishing Phase, the strips for french-fold binding will be made and the wall hanging will be bound and finished.

Cheers!

An Asian Inspired Wall Quilt - Part 3

The Construction Phase

During the design phase, the fabrics for the lanterns were picked out and using the foil wrapped method, paper pieced into hexagon shapes. .

6 hexagons

 Using Clover bias adhesive-backed tape, two rows of three hexagons were placed on a white background.

2 rows of 3 hexagons placed on white background

The next step was to finalize the arrangement.  The rope and lanterns were repositioned and ironed in place.  Something seemed not right, so hangers were added to the lanterns.

Hangers were added to lanterns

This looked much more like Japanese lanterns.  It was now time to sew all the bias strips and hexagons down onto the white background.  All bias taped surfaces were zig-zagged in place.  Look closely at the lanterns and notice the edge stitching with black thread.

All pieces sewn in place

It was now time to add the first set of borders.1 inch black strips were folded in half, sewn to each side of the white square and pressed towards the white fabric.

1st set of vertical borders added

Horizontal borders were added in the same way.

All four borders sewn in place

In Part 4 of this series, the final assembly will be completed, so watch for that segment in the near future!

Cheers!

An Asian Inspired Wall Quilt - Part 2

The Design Phase

My design wall came in very handy last night as I gave this quilt more thought.  After putting two and two together, this equation came to mind.  Japanese fabrics plus hexagons equals Japanese lanterns!  And because it has to be a quick quilt, I decided to create just six of them and frame them in a 12" block.

Picked out 6 fabrics for lanterns

Remember that fun and easy technique I told you about in Part 1 of this series?  I'm going to call it the Foil Wrapped Method for constructing hexagons, which eliminates the tedious basting step.  Here's how it's done!

I gathered the ingredients for this wrap, the first of which is aluminum foil, cut into 4" squares.

4" squares of aluminum foil

The second ingredient is the plastic 2" hexagon template. Uh-oh, I found that the plastic template is not heat-resistant!  Look what happened to it!

The plastic warps and shrinks when heat is applied to it!

So I used the paper template, provided by Craftsy (on page 7 of the class materials for the April BOM), and folded down the edges to make the 2" hexagon shape.  This template has to be accurate and sturdy.  The fabric that will be wrapped around it doesn't need to be cut to the exact shape.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Take a look at the paper template I created.

Back of paper template
with edges folded down

Front of paper template

The third ingredient is a piece of fabric, trimmed to 4".

4" piece of fabric

To assemble the wrap, place the ingredients on the ironing surface in the following order:

• 4" square of foil, shiny side up
• 4" fabric, face down
• paper template of hexagon, face down

Assemble the wrap

Now fold the all the edges around the paper template.

Fold down all 6 edges

 Press the front of the foil-wrapped hexagon.

Press front with a hot iron

Press the back of the foil-wrapped hexagon.

Press the creases on the back

Undo the wrap, separating the 3 layers and press the fabric hexagon again.

Separate the layers of the wrap

See how easy that is?  No fiddling with needle and thread, or hand-basting all those edges down!  English- paper-piecing (EPP) will be a breeze from here on!  I found the blog that demonstrated this method for constructing Super Circles.  Brilliant!

Now back to the design board.

Time to preview the six hexies

With the help of Clover bias tape in a black color,

Clover bias tape

 and a little trimming,

Trim excess from lantern

the lanterns look lovely!

Pretty lanterns

Take a look at the lantern on the right of the last row.  It's upside down, but that'll be taken care of in Part 3 of this series, the Construction Phase.  The Clover bias tape is re-positionable until it's sewn down, thank goodness!

So look out for the next segment in this series.

Cheers!

An Asian Inspired Wall Quilt - Part 1

The Fabric Selection Phase

I've taken the first step in the creation of a quilt inspired by Japanese fabrics, the fabric selection phase.  A long time ago, before the year 2000, I made a Fan Quilt. At that time, I'd sent for a Japanese Fan Quilt kit from a mail order company. It came with numerous little rectangles of Japanese fabrics, and yardages of black fabric and printed fabric for sashing and borders.

Sashing and border fabric

Craftsy's April BOM challenge was to come up with an alternative design for the English paper pieced hexagon shape. So I dug out the fabric kit and laid out a few of the pieces.

Rectangles of Japanese fabrics

These rectangles of fabric are just large enough to accommodate the 2" hexagon template.  Here are the templates I'd made for Craftsy's April BOM.  They're in 2". 1-1/4" and 3/4" hexagon sizes.

Hexagon Templates

I saved the parchment paper pieces I'd made from these templates.

Parchment paper pieces

However, I may not need to use them because I plan to use a unique technique I saw somewhere on someone else's blog to form the hexagons.  I will track down that blog, so that you too can try this technique!

So watch this space for the next phase of this project - Part 2, the Design Phase.

  

Easiest Ever Design Wall

My sewing room or quilting studio is ever evolving.

What do I consider are the must-haves for such a room, besides all the necessary equipment, of course?

• Storage Space

1. For fabrics
2. Rulers and templates
3. Threads and bobbins
4. Books on quilting
5. Projects in progress

• A sewing machine cabinet
• A cutting table
• An ironing table
• One or more design walls
• et al

In the last 20+ years, I've been concentrating my efforts on organizing, and sometimes installing, the first four must-haves.  And for 20+ years I've been dreaming of and conceptualizing the ideal design wall.  So many wasted years of placing, arranging, re-arranging and designing quilts on my bed.

Using bed for a design wall 

A few years ago, I sent for a design wall kit from Fons and Porter's (F&P) mail-order shop and a couple of nights ago, I decided to bite the bullet and try installing it myself.  Well, as you can imagine, I couldn't find the kit even though I searched and looked in all the most logical places.  LOL!  But, guess what?  Right under my nose was another flannel sheet, probably purchased for this very purpose, but it wasn't very big - about 3' by 4'.  I imagined a whole wall devoted to designing! :)

This wall is located between the bookshelf and door

So I kept searching and finally found the F&P kit.  I swear to have looked in that exact same place before!  And it was a whopping 60" x 72"!  Awesome!  It really isn't a kit because it doesn't contain the hardware (or software) to install the design wall.  It's simply a flannel-backed vinyl table cloth with 2" squares printed on the vinyl side of the fabric.  The 2" squares are dark enough that they show through on the flannel side.  Oh, forgive me my transgressions!  There is some hardware in the form of grommets along the 'top' edge of the table cloth.  

Grommets on top edge of flannel backed vinyl

I picked up some 3M photo frame hangers and required Command strips from JoAnn Fabric and Crafts.

Medium and small Command strips

 It was really difficult to line up the grommets exactly which kept falling off the hangers, so I used medium sized Command strips to attach the vinyl sheet to the hanger, just below the grommets.  So that took care of the top of the design wall.

Medium sized Command strips

Then the flannel sheet was smoothed out and stretched from side to side and the smaller Command strips were put to use.

Small Command strips

The small Command strips are used in pairs.

These are used in pairs

The velcro sides are pressed together to fasten.

Velcro sides are zipped together

The protective paper backing is removed to expose a sticky surface which is pressed on the wall with the tabs pointing down and allowed to cure for 30 minutes.  The protective layer on top is then removed and the vinyl sheet is stretched and adhered to the sticky tape.  I did this all the way down the two sides, stretching and sticking from side to side and top to bottom.

Voila! The design wall is ready for action!

 If for any reason the design wall needs to be taken down, all one has to do is pull on the tabs in a downward motion until it stretches about 12 inches and the Command strips come right off without damaging the wall!

Not only do I have a design wall, but I also have a flat surface with a white background on which I can place my projects to photograph them.  It is far enough away that I can move to the opposite wall to get a good view when it's time to arrange units in a block, or blocks in a quilt.

What am I most proud of?  That I did this all on my own, without using a hammer or nails!