TBC Crafters Thrilling Thursday ~ (#TBCcrafters) Mini Quilt Tutorial

From the title of my blog you can tell that I love doing crafts, especially stamping. I have sorely been neglecting that part of my blog, my life and my creativity. So I have joined with a great bunch of bloggers, #TBCcrafters to nudged myself on in this department, crafting. But surprisingly enough I am not starting with stamping. Go figure!! I am starting with quilting.

I just took part in a Friendship Quilt Swap and had so much fun, so I thought I would start with the little quilt I made for that. Quilting goes way back in my family and I am blessed to have quilts from several great grandmas, both grandmas, several great aunts and my Mom. So it thrills me to keep this tradition alive in my family even if I am not as good as they were or are at quilting.

Starting with a basic small quilt is a great place to start. Starting with a full size queen quilt, not so much! The first step is choosing the fabric. Love fat quarters. They make matching fabrics easy and getting all the fabrics you need without being a material hoarder easy. Of course hoarding a little material might not be such a bad thing. LOL!! You can see the choices I made for my little quilt above.

The next step is picking an embroidery design. The design I used is pictured bellow with a link. But you can actually take any kind of picture and use it as an embroidery design for a quilt. Simply print the picture off and tape it on a light box. (Please make sure it is not a copyrighted picture before use!!) Place muslin material over it and using a removable fabric pen trace the design you want to embroider. If you don't have a light box, just use a window that is getting a lot of light through it at the time. 

Here is the link if you would like to get the design I used. Embroidery Design  But remember, any kind of design can be used. You can also find an embroidery tutorial HERE which is super helpful for the beginner. Take your time to embroider making sure you use very small knots and not to extend the floss from one point to the next so the thread does not show through the material and distract the eye from the work! 

You can see here that there are not lines going from one letter to the next. Each letter and each color were done individually so there would not be all those distractions showing through the fabric. I purposely wanted it to look primitive. That tends to be my style and I love the finished product!

Now comes the fun part, erasing all the marker from the work. BE PATIENT!! Sometimes that marker can be stubborn to get out. Just follow the directions and don't give up till it is all gone. If you were a little heavy handed with the marker it is harder to get the ink out, but it WILL come out. Just keep applying the water and dabbing to remove it. Letting it dry completely each time before dabbing more and placing a clean towel under it while working helps. 

After it is ready, cutting the material is next. I trimmed my design down so there was not a lot of excess material on any one side, but left myself a full 1/2 inch to play with for sewing, of course making sure the design was straight and centered   Then I simply started adding strips to build up the quilt. The first was the frame for the embroidery. I cut the material 1 inch wide and started with the long side. I sewed from one end to the next and trimmed the material to the edge of the muslin. I repeated with the short sides and trimmed again. Then I ironed flat the seams away from the muslin so it didn't show through. All other seams I opened and ironed flat.

The next row I cut the material 2 1/2 inches wide. To the long sides I added a piece of material that was the same length as the finished side from before and then ironed the seams. But before sewing on the short sides I wanted to add a square in the corners that was 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches. I measured carefully the length of the side, cut the material to that measurement and added a square to each end.

The next row I didn't add squares to the corners and did the same as I did to add the frame around the embroidery only using 2 1/2 inch strips of material, cutting them to fit as I sewed them on.

The last row I wanted squares again in the corners and did the same as the previous row with squares. Of course with each strip of fabric you need to remember to iron open the seams! It helps the quilt lay nice and flat with no puckering or lumps!! Here is what it looked like done.

Next comes the fun part, quilting! I used Warm and Natural Quilt Batting. I love the texture and the way it feels in a quilt. Of course I am not much of a polyester kind of person either! But choose the batting you want with the loft (thickness) you want! To get the right size of batting you need to measure your finished quilt and then take 1/2 inch off the long side and 1/2 inch off the short side. This gives you a 1/4 inch on each side to allow for the seams with the material and to keep a ton of bulk out of the binding. Then you need to measure your backing material to the same size of the front of the quilt, sandwich the pieces together and pin to keep in place! I chose to machine quilt this one and simply used a cream colored thread and sewed in all seam ditches. I prefer hand quilting, but for times sake I sewed with my machine instead. You need to be careful stopping and starting so the back stitches you do don't show up, so patience and going slow is a good idea especially if you are new at it.

The final part of the quilt is my least favorite part of the whole quilting process, binding. Oooh I can not tell you how much I do not like binding. but it is important to do it right. It would take a whole post and then some to explain it well so I am going to give you a link with what I think is the best tutorial for binding I have ever found. How To Bind A Quilt. Be patient again and I know you can do it. It may take a few times to get it right and you may have to rip out a few stitches but learning to bind a quilt properly will pay off in the long run if you are going to learn to quilt properly!

The finished product is worth it. I am by far not an expert quilter. But with each quilt I make I am getting better and enjoying it a lot more.

If you are interested in seeing more of the quilts that were apart of the Friendship Quilt Exchange you can find them HERE. You'll recognize them from the same embroidery pattern on the quilt. Some of  them are amazing and absolutely beautiful!

Do you have a Thrilling Thursday craft to add? Add a link to your blog post in the linky below after you've left a comment on this post and add this button to your blog post!

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