Binding

My next project was to finish a table top quilt which needed binding.

But first the quilt needed to be trimmed from the excess batting and material not required.  You can see from the photo below, I laid out the quilt on my table, with my rubber mat underneath and when I felt confident I had a straight line, I trimmed off the excess.   A good way to make sure of a straight line is to line the ruler up against the middle border strip, checking the ruler line for that strip runs straight with the line on the ruler, small tweaks tend to be enough to then feel confident to go ahead and cut off the excess material to the edge of the quilt.

I checked my fabric stash to see what material I would go for to finish this quilt.

Then I proceeded to cut 2.5” strips

To make your binding continuous, you need to lay the strips right sides together, as per the photo below.

Then fold the material so it looks like the above photo, you create a crease in the material which will be your sew line.

Fold the material back again and pin the material and with a fabric pen draw a line along the sew line.  This will help you keep on track when sewing.

Now the strips are ready to be sewn together.
Using a couple of back stitches at both ends, sew along the sew line.

And once this is done, go back to the iron to press the seam open.

Repeat process for however many strips are required to go around the whole quilt.  I always lay my strips out, loosely around the edge of the quilt prior to doing the above, to make sure I have enough strips to go the whole way around.  By the time I had finished sewing about 8 strips of material together I was having to wrap it round my neck just to keep it under control.

Next you need to fold the material in half and press with the iron.

Once this was complete, the binding was then ready to pin to the quilt.

Starting at the bottom of the quilt, I located the middle.  Added a pin.
Then located 4” to the right and left of the center and added 2 further pins.

Leaving a 10” tail on my binding, I then started to pin my binding, raw edges together, starting from the left hand pin, pinned the material to the first corner.  Took the quilt over to sewing machine, adding a couple of back stitches, stitched to the first corner less 1/4” and finished with a couple of back stitches.  Took the quilt out and made a 45 degree turn on the material to create a mitre corner.  Then pinned the quilt all the way down the side, again finishing 1/4” from the end. Repeated the same exercise until I reached the pin I added to the right of the bottom center pin.   At this point, I finished the stitching with a couple of back stitches.  I took the quilt out and created two 45 degree cut lines, to the right tail and the left tail, making sure they would connect and ran in the same direction and then turned the material right sides together and sewed the final seam together.  Once that was in place, I then proceeded to stitch the binding from the right pin to the left pin to complete the attachment of the binding.

To complete the binding, I then proceeded to fold the binding over to the back side of the quilt.  To create an invisible stitch, the best way to finish the attachment of the binding is to hand sew the binding.

I’m a complete novice to this, I searched on YouTube and came across the attached video that helped me finish the binding enormously.

https://youtu.be/fJvDOEFlJ4s


Here is the finished quilt.

Face masks

Today’s mini sewing project was to make a couple of face masks for myself and my husband.

I had seen a video online and liked the look of how the mask was put together.  Here is a link for convenience.  https://vimeo.com/404059593

I cut all my pieces of fabric, using some fat quarters (FQ) I had in my stash.   You can make 2 from one FQ.   I found some coordinating fabric for the straps and cut 2” strips approximately 36” long.

I cut the FQ in to two, chose a batik style fabric as it’s easier to pleat.

Folded fabric in half and turned it right sides together, then sewed along the open end side to effectively create a tube.  Turned the fabric inside out so the good side was now to the front and back of the mask, pressed the material.  Turned the material round so the longest part was now facing towards me.   Then made four folded pleats, folding from the top down, using my fingers to hold pleats in places, took fabric over to my sewing machine and placed center of strap to the edge of mask, right sides together, then sewed a quarter inch seam down the strap, from the top of mask, securing the pleats in place, to bottom of mask.   Repeated process for the other side of mask.

Then I took material over to the iron and turned strap material over to the other side and then at the top of strap folded both raw edges into the center of the strap and pressed, went back to my machine folding the fold again, placed under machine, added a back stitch, sewed down the strap, onto the mask, off again right to the other end of the strap.   Finishing with a back stitch.   Repeated process for the other side.  To finish, straps I folded over the tops edges, twice, and hand sewed to avoid top edges fraying.

Here are some photos of the masks.

my husband, Gary, testing out his face mask 😷 

Tuffet making

Learning the art of Tuffet making ...

I first learnt the art of tuffet making last Spring (2019) when I signed up to a local class at one of my favorite fabric stores in San Jose, California.   

This was the end result.

I was proud of myself to have created something so beautiful and have put it together all by myself - with some assistance from the class teacher.  I was super impressed with myself at successfully managing to handle an electric staple gun, without causing injury to me or anyone else.   I'm not a power tool kind of girl.    I usually leave anything involving power tools to my husband (Gary). 

So having completed this beautiful masterpiece, I just wanted to do it again.  Of course...

I made a few purchases in readiness to get myself started but then just could not find the confidence to actually start a new.   I purchased some material, but then I just put the whole thing on the 'back burner'. 

Moving forward 12 months, its now Spring 2020 #lockdown and the whole world seems to have ground to halt or may be it just seems that way due to the current pandemic being caused by Covid19. It sure is an eerie time indeed, but I am also trying to put this completely unexpected time I have off from work, to some good use. 

Last week I received a text from a friend, prompting me to "Tough it out and make your Tuffets!"

It gave me the push I needed to take another look at what I had purchased and see if I could start a new tuffet. 

With the help of my fantastic husband, Gary, he designed a tuffet pattern on his computer using software, Fusion360.  He cut me out a 17" round piece of wood from some scrap using his X-carve.  Certain holes were drilled into the wood ready for the t-nuts to be installed. 

We then transferred our design to the Cricut Design Space software to allow us to print and cut using my Cricut Maker ↑😊  After a couple of test runs, we then felt confident to try drawing the design onto muslin fabric and cutting it out with the Maker's rotary blade.   It came out great and all the pen lines were pretty good and the cut line was perfect.   I just peeled away the excess fabric from the cut outline and everything just matched up perfectly.   I then proceeded to print and cut out a further 7 pieces as 8 parts of the pattern are needed to make one round tuffet, like that up above.

The next morning (Sunday) I proceeded to cut my strips of fabric in readiness to sew and then laid them out into a pattern, similar to that which would eventually form the tuffet, so I could see if anything needed changing or moving.  I took a couple of photos to check my design.  A photo can show off obvious errors or adjustments that need making with a design that a naked eye might not notice.   I then proceeded to sew my fabric to the muslin, in the same way I had been taught at the class.   Then laid the design out again just to make absolutely sure every panel is still in its correct place ready to be sewn to its adjacent panel.   Examples below. 

Once I had sewn every panel, the end result looked like this below. 

I pinned the button fabric to the button to see what it might look like.  I took several photos to look at the design and check I liked what I was seeing as, at this stage, I still had time to change my mind. 

Monday morning I woke up ready to crack on with finishing the fabric part of the tuffet, which required me to sew on the nylon string to the bottom of the tuffet hood. 

Once completed, I was then ready to assemble 👊.  

To do this, one must lay the foam cushion on to a big enough piece of upholstery batting, that can be pulled up and over the cushion foam and circle of wood (which is placed on the top of the foam cushion).  Using the electric staple gun, I began to staple the batting to the wood, about 1/2" from the edge, pulling tightly as I went, stapling in line with a clock face 12, 6, 3 and 9, then 1, 7, 4 and 10, etc slowly going round filling in the gaps, working from one side to the other, until you end up with a pretty smoothed out piece of batting over your cushion foam.  I then trimmed off the excess batting to about 1/2" in from the staples to neaten it up.

Next, I needed to find the center of the tuffet top and once I had located this, I marked the area with a X one which I would see, through the center hole, once the tuffet hood was in place.

This next part requires two people .. so I asked my husband to give me a hand.

With his help, we pulled on the tuffet top, over the cushion foam / wood.   Its like trying to get an extra tight dress on someone two sizes too small.   It requires a lot of squeezing and pushing on the foam to manipulate the fabric over the sides.   Once in place, we then needed to add the button.  I let my husband handle this part, as it was quite tricky, trying to feed a 12" needle from one end of the tuffet to the other, trying to find both center holes and feeding through the nylon strings attached to the button, which when pulled tightly would eventually hold the button in place.   Using a piece of plastic drain pipe, we then turned the tuffet upside down, placing the button part of the tuffet into the center of the drain pipe.   I then instructed my husband to push down on the tuffet as hard as he could, whilst I pulled tight the nylon strings and tied them.  We then flipped the tuffet over and ended up with this. 

So next was to cut out a round piece of fabric, this was to cover the bottom wood panel.  I added a personalized label to complete the finish.

Today we received our bun feet for our tuffet and Gary was able to install the t-nuts to the wood panel.   The last things to do are to staple gun the fabric to the wood, tack the fabric cover to the wood and then finally screw the bun feet in place.

And here we have the finished tuffet.