A finished quilt is always a cause for great rejoicing. The pink quilt made its way across the street to 2-year-old Rose who was delighted with it and has been toting it out of the house and into the car according to her observant and proud neighbors.
Hannah tried free motion quilting, first on a practice piece. After a couple of minutes she said, "This takes practice!" But she kept on, writing her name and following the markings of a stenciled flower. She quilted Rose's name on the quilt near the top and I did the same at the bottom. She did a great job and demonstrated an I-can-do-it attitude which is imperative when approaching the art of free motion quilting.
Using a darning foot, I added some free-motion stitch-in-the-ditch around the green lines to get them to lie down flat and not pop up.
After the binding was on, we submerged the quilt in cold water in the bath tub to remove the blue water soluble markings. After a thorough rinsing, we took the quilt to the washing machine and spun out the excess water. At this point, we dried the quilt in the clothes dryer for just 10 minutes on a low heat setting. Hannah was somewhat surprised that the quilt had shrunk up a bit. This could be attributed to the batting more than the fabric, which I think was prewashed. Something to think about if you want a flat quilt with no compression around the quilting. Prewash fabric and soak the batting and dry on low heat to preshrink.
Copyright ©2008, Sharon Baggs
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