A quiet evening & I managed to get plenty done on the wall hanging. I must admit that I am very pleased with how well this project is working out and I can tell that my sewing and cutting skills are improving.
I cut the border strips first of all but I also had to trim the background fabric down as when I started this project I had cut it larger than the pattern required (on purpose). Once the border strips were cut I then sewed the first one to the bottom of the background fabric, sewed the patchwork panel to the bottom of the first border and then attached the top and bottom borders. Thankfully as I had been accurate with my rotary cutter I achieved all of this without a hitch for once!The next task was to cut and attach the side borders. I checked the length of the wall hanging to make sure that the size required by the pattern would fit (I found that the side strips would extend out further than the length of the wall hanging but this was no problem as I could trim them down once they were attached.
Once the side borders were attached I had to layer up the wall hanging with the wadding and backing fabric. I had some polyester wadding and some cotton wadding left over from previous projects. Unfortunately the cotton wadding was not wide enough to fit the wall hanging so I had to use the polyester wadding (having worked with both types I definitely prefer the cotton as it is much nicer to sew through although it is thinner). I laid the wadding out & placed the front of the wall hanging on top & then cut the wadding to size, leaving a nice wide margin of wadding extending out from underneath the wall hanging top. I repeated this process for the backing fabric.
Now it was time to baste! Even though this was a small project I still found it a bit tricky trying to ensure that all the fabric layers were pinned together nice and smoothy and pucker free. I wish I had some 505 spray to help the layers stick together as I was pinning them. After a bit of fiddling about I did manage to get the wall hanging basted.
Before I started quilting I changed the needle on the sewing machine....I had noticed that the previous needle was starting to make a slight popping noise as it was going through the fabric when I was sewing the borders. I hadn't changed the needle since buying the machine and I guess that the quilting I had done on the previous project had blunted the needle slightly. I also changed the presser foot on the machine for the walking foot.
My last job of the evening was quilting the wall hanging. I chose to use navy blue thread for this as the borders are blue on the wall hanging and I think it looks nice.
The last job is to add the binding. I am saving this task for tomorrow. I have not yet decided how I am going to do this. The pattern suggests that you do each side separately but I might do it as continuos strip binding to practice what I learnt on my first big quilt....anyway we shall see what tomorrow brings....nighty night xxx
