Showing posts with label machine binding. Show all posts

Thursday, August 27, 2026

Rainbow Neighbourhood Finish and I Quilted This!

Hi and welcome😎. It's difficult to start my post without mentioning the local weather, so I'll stop trying! I feel like I'm finally having my almost perfect summer. Yes, there is the possibility of rain every couple of days but it doesn't last more than 2 days. The weather is cool and perfect at night while the days are not as hot, except for a little bit of humidex - which means that I can do my all-time favourite thing - have my first and second cups of coffee outside. Yay! Now for the quilting part😀

A Rainbow Neighbourhood Finish

It's 99% done at the time of publishing this post. It will be completely done by the end of August, but probably before. Today (Wednesday) since I write my post and then publish it on Thursday at midnight, I have to get the quilt mostly done so that I can take those important outside pictures. There are now only minor teal, blue and green FMQ left to do. Not much but you know that even a few inches of FMQ can take a long time.

Photo of finished Rainbow Neighbourhood Quilt

Here are close-up photos of the top and bottom rows of the houses.

Top left of the first two rows of the quilt

Top right of the first two rows of the quilt

Bottom left of the second and third rows of the quilt

Bottom right of the second and third rows of the quilt

I want to thank Sandra Walker of mmm quilts for hosting the Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL in 2023. I went through all of my posts to track my progress and added them below to the Related links. It's been a lot of work and overall, a lot of fun.😃

FM Embroidered Label

If you've been following me lately, you know that I've been procrastinating a bit but it all got done in the end. Last week I watched the Free Motion Quilting Summit 2026 and made my first FM embroidered label. It mostly came out well, until I messed it up 😒

I started by cutting fabric, folding it into a triangle and inserting a sheet of interfacing between the two triangles. I then used a FriXion pen to mark lines to write on, and a centre line to help keep it centered.

Preparing a FM embroidered label for the back corner

I wrote out the message with the heat erasable pen and copied it, going over each letter three times. It's in French and I may have made spelling mistakes but it's from the heart!

FM embroidered the message

I attached it to the quilt before putting on the binding, but unfortunately, not before finishing the FMQ.

Oops!

Here's the culprit.

And I thought that I was doing so well!

I'll be stitching down the bottom of the label and adjusting the binding - attaching a little bit of the label that didn't make it under the binding and fixing the corner binding. Except for this and one other tiny section, the binding went on great. Practice does help!

One final detail

As I was marking the last roof to be FMQ, I realised that I would be having an issue with bunching. So I'm thrilled to say that I remembered what I had learned when that last happened. I sewed down all of the horizontal lines before FMQ the clam shell shapes for the roof tiles. It worked beautifully.

I also had an oops moment stitching one of the horizontal lines and had a bit of a hiccup. So once I was FMQ the actual clam shells I remembered another class that I watched on the Free Motion Quilting Summit 2026. The teacher was showing us how to FMQ all kinds of rainbows and variations. Since the clam shells are the beginning of the rainbow, I remembered that she FMQ a heart within the centre. So, I did that, and then realised that I could backtrack and add a little heart where I had my hiccup! Can you see them in the image below?

A couple of hearts FMQ within the roof tiles.

What I learned (or remembered)

As I just mentioned, I was thrilled to remember to sew horizontal lines before stitching the roof with clam shells. It really stabilized the fabric - no bunching.
I mostly FMQ by thread colour. That means that I'll do everything in one thread colour before switching out the colour. I often find another something that I should have quilted but it's less of a hassle than always switching thread colours. That's why I have a little bit of teal, blue and green details left to FMQ.
The binding went on by machine very well. I only have a few minor sections to fix. It was worth practicing last week.
I'm going to get as much as I can finished tonight (since it's still early and this post is almost done). I want to finish it to give to our friends but also to keep working on other projects.
I'll be posting on Saturday for the Quilter's Cove SAL - this month's colour is yellow. I've gone through my scraps and found many interesting things. I guess you'll find out on Satureday which type of house I'm making🏠

I Quilted This!

Welcome to the I Quilted This! linking party that celebrates quilting on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. Feel free to link up and share any recent project, even if you're not quilting it!

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button.

Janine of Rainbow Hare quilted her Grannies without borders quilt. What a happy gorgeous quilt. You'll want to check out her post for some lovely pictures. I promise you it's worth it!

Janine's Grannies without borders

Terry of On Going Projects quilted up a fun mug rug. Terry wanted to practice her partial braid. She quilted the straight lines with a ruler and then continuous curves in the squares.

Terry's partial braid mug rug

Diann at Little Penguin Quilts made a scrappy yellow placemat for August. Yellow really is a happy colour! Her straight line quilting really emphasizes the sunflower star.

Diann's lovely yellow sunflower star placemat

Sandra of mmm quilts has been using up her layer cakes to make quilts. After Sandra's FMQ with dot-to-dot ruler work, it's a real beauty called Kitty Karma. This lovely is going to her neighbour and friend who is Sandra's own Bella cat sitter. The recipient will be comfortable with her own cat on her lap. The back is a lovely fleece. You'll want to check out Sandra's post for more info and pictures.

Sandra's Kitty Karma quilted with ruler work dot-to-dot

Vicki from Vicki's Crafts and Quilting made two great wall hangings from panels. They are both fall themed and well designed with blocks and parts of various panels. Vicki quilted the first fall quilt with ruler work as well as some lovely FMQ in the small blocks and flying geese.

Fall wall hanging made from panel - designed and quilted by Vicki

The Welcome Harvest wall hanging was also made using several different panels. Vicki quilted it with ruler work. You can check out her post for lovely quilty close-ups.

Welcome Harvest wall hanging by Vicki

Gail of Quilting Gail made a version on Dancing Shadows, designed by Brenda of Songbird Quilts. It's a lovely version FMQ with what Gail called "all over 3 finger open loop with echoing." You can see some FMQ close-ups on Gail's post.

Gail's version of Dancing Shadows

Frédérique of Quilting Patch Appliqué visited her sister-in-law and got to see the Geishas folding screen that she made for her in 2007. If you go to her post, you can check out her original posts on how she made and quilted it.

Geishas Folding Panel made by Frédérique in 2007

It's now your turn 😍

Thursday, December 21, 2023

T-shirt Quilt Finish on Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 461 of Free Motion Mavericks. I delivered the quilt to my nephew last night at 10:30 so that he could pack it up to bring to Denmark. He lives down the street so it wasn't a long journey. He and his roommate are tall men, so they helped me take a few quick pictures of the quilt. Thanks guys!😊

A Finished T-shirt Quilt

It's done and since I drove my nephew to the airport... I know that it's way to Copenhagen ✈

A finished queen size t-shirt quilt

I'm not going to go through all of the blocks, mostly because since I don't have the quilt with me, I can't really see from the pictures what I quilted on them! 😎 Here are just a few highlights.

I had quilted stars in the sashing of this t-shirt but wasn't sure what or with what thread to quilt the t-shirt. In the image below this one, you can see the threads that I used. I FMQ with the neon orange while I originally used the variegated thread to zig-zag stitch the "14" panel from the back of the shirt to the front.

Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) the bright orange t-shirt

Threads used to stitch the t-shirt

On the next two Ottawa Lions t-shirts, I FMQ the sashing with some dot-to-dot diamonds and other designs within the squares and rectangles. It was good to do something different.

Using dot-to-dot FMQ in the sashing

More dot-to-dot FMQ

The last t-shirt quilted was the New York one. For part of the sashing, I FMQ some lightning bolt designs. I then quilted the contour of the buildings, signs and statue. I used a pink thread to fill in the sky.

FMQ the New York t-shirt

FMQ the Border

I wasn't sure what to FMQ in the two side borders. I knew that it had to fill in the space quickly without being too fiddly. I found the design in Angela Walter's second book, Shape by Shape Collection 2. She calls it the Serpentine Clusters. It has three serpentine lines and then a row of feathers.

Angela Walter's Serpentine Clusters design in the two borders

Squaring the Quilt

I am accuracy challenged at the best of times. With a t-shirt quilt, you just make it up as you go along since most blocks are different sizes. It's difficult to square things when you can't really measure from anything. All I could do was make each side straight-ish and then see if the quilt could be folded in half properly.

Straightening the border sides

The quilt didn't past the folding or wonky test. Since these are just the borders, I knew that I could adjust them as required.

Folding the quilt lengthwise

Trimming the edges

I put together strips of the Kona Solids that I had used for sashing in the quilt. I was lucky that the sashing also used 2½" strips. I was able to use many of them for the binding and didn't have to do too much cutting.

Cutting strips after squaring the quilt

Strips of binding ready to be sewn together

I then used Quilting Jet Girl's Tips for Making / Planning a Scrappy Binding. It was very useful (see Related links below). I needed the binding colour used around the quilt to be a different colour from the fabric it was going to be attached to. Otherwise, the binding tends to recede and looks like there is no binding.

I put the quilt on our king size bed and placed each strip down where I wanted. Then I very carefully stitched them in the correct order and side. It was then time to attach the binding strip to the back of the quilt.

Attaching the binding strip to the back of the quilt

Finally I turned the binding over and stitched it using one of my fancy stitches. It was the first time that I did this, and I really like the result. My wavy stitching pattern isn't straight but it doesn't show as much as a straight stitching line that is wonky! 😁

Stitching down the binding with a fancy stitch

Here's a couple more pictures of the finished quilt. I hope that my niece will take some so that I can post them.

Part of the finished quilt

The best pictures I could get of the finished quilt

What I learned

FMQ a quilt that did not have batting was different. There is no doubt that the quilt would have been too heavy for my niece with batting.
The FMQ went well. I only had issues with tension a couple of times. I'm not sure what happened but when I re-threaded the machine, everything was fine.
All of the thread used for FMQ was polyester. The bobbin thread was Superior Thread's Bottom Line (60wt). I used two more colours of Bottom Line. There was also 4 colours of Madeira polyneon, 6 colours of Glide polyester thread and then the neon Orange polyester thread from Coats (I think). They also needed the same tension, so that was great.
As I mentioned, I used Quilting Jet Girl's Tips for Making / Planning a Scrappy Binding. I know that the colour of the binding needs to be a different colour from the fabric that it's attached to, otherwise the binding tends to recede and it ends up looking like there is no binding.
I knew that I wouldn't have time to hand-stitch the binding so I found a video, "How To Bind a Quilt on a Sewing Machine with Jenny Doan of Missouri Star". It taught me what I needed to know and except for one corner, the stitching went really well.
I decided to use the wavy stitch from my machine since I knew that a straight stitch line would not be straight. I also wanted something a little bit wide to attach the binding well.
Now that my niece's t-shirt quilt is done, I can focus on Christmas 🎄🎅 and other projects.
I'm also looking forward in participating in the usual end-of-year blogging posts. See you then!

Free Motion Mavericks

What wonderful quilts we had last week. I haven't visited everyone yet, but I will! 😊

Denise of the Quiltery (Love of Geese) made this really lovely Christmas hanging for both the Virtual Cookie Exchange and the Island Batik Ambassador Celebration Challenge.

Christmas tree and gift wall hanging by Denise

Donnalee finished her first fabric collage piece based on mushrooms that she saw on a trip to New Zealand. What a great finish!

Mushroom fabric collage piece by Donnalee

Melva of Melva Loves Scraps, finished her customer's t-shirt quilt and it's been delivered. It really looks great with the sashing and border fabrics.

Melva's finished customer's t-shirt quilt

Quilting Gail participated in the monthly Classic Car Colour Challenge hosted by Jen @ Patterns by Jen. What a great quilt! I especially like the border piecing. Gail did “Wild” or “Graffiti” quilting in the centre. The outside was quilted using Silly Moon’s Rocket ruler.