Now that I have all my units cut out and bagged, I need to move on to my fabric. I know there's a lot of advice out there about washing or not washing your fabric before sewing and I'm firmly in the wash first group. But let me tell you why.....
A few years ago, I decided to make a quilt for my 40th birthday and turning 40 that same year was the 1973 triple crown win by Secretariat. So I designed a quilt featuring horse and rider, all hand appliqued, the background was hand painted using Inktense pencils, hand embroidery and trapunto in the borders. So a lot of work went into this quilt. I used a blue batik with a white fabric to make a checkerboard which was the Meadow Farms colors. And during my quilting process I decided to use the chalk method to mark out where I as going to quilt. Well, I couldn't get the chalk out and pink chalk was kinda ground in the white fabric from the quilting. So I took a spray bottle with water and I was going to lightly buff the chalk out with water. This seemed reasonable until I watched with horror as dark blue ink from the batik spread all over the white squares and turned them light blue.
Needless to say I had to throw the entire quilt into the washer along with a color catcher, turn the thing on and hope my hand embroidery didn't fall apart or the hand applique or anything else equally horrible to ruin the quilt I had worked 7 months on. I'm glad to report that the color catcher I tossed in was a dark blue and white parts of the quilt were white when it came out.
So after that incident, I vowed to pre-wash my fabric before starting any project. And as a side tip, before you wash your fabric, take a safety pin and pin the fabric layers together. Just accordion the fabric back and forth about 20-30 inches in length and pin with a safety pins in a few places so that it can't turn itself inside out then wash and dry. The pins will keep everything together and the fabric won't ball itself up around another bit of fabric which is a plus.
So back to this quilt...
After washing you should iron your fabric to get everything flat before cutting.
Here's some pictures of the layout sheets for the units and templates for cutting. There are a lot of units and templates to cut out for this quilt and that's why it took me so long to get everything ready.
And before you do any cutting make sure you read the instructions thoroughly for each booklet or section you're working on.
But first I made a fabric key for each unit. There is a key in each of the booklets but I went with note cards instead just to keep my original in tact. So I wrote down the booklet number, unit, the background fabric with a piece of the fabric as well as well as my accent fabric 2A-2F along with a piece of fabric. This way there should be no confusion as to which fabric goes where.
The instructions will tell you how much fabric to cut, stack them rights sides up, then lay the cutting sheet on top and cut the various pieces with your rotary cutter. The instructions will even tell you how to label your bags and which bags the cut pieces go into. Just go slowly and follow the instructions.
It's also a good idea to clip/safety pin your individual stacks together then put them into the labeled bag with the paper unit.
After all the cutting of the layout sheets and fabric, the units will come together very quickly and then you just have to sew the units together in the right order.
Next up, is putting together some of the units.
A few years ago, I decided to make a quilt for my 40th birthday and turning 40 that same year was the 1973 triple crown win by Secretariat. So I designed a quilt featuring horse and rider, all hand appliqued, the background was hand painted using Inktense pencils, hand embroidery and trapunto in the borders. So a lot of work went into this quilt. I used a blue batik with a white fabric to make a checkerboard which was the Meadow Farms colors. And during my quilting process I decided to use the chalk method to mark out where I as going to quilt. Well, I couldn't get the chalk out and pink chalk was kinda ground in the white fabric from the quilting. So I took a spray bottle with water and I was going to lightly buff the chalk out with water. This seemed reasonable until I watched with horror as dark blue ink from the batik spread all over the white squares and turned them light blue.
Needless to say I had to throw the entire quilt into the washer along with a color catcher, turn the thing on and hope my hand embroidery didn't fall apart or the hand applique or anything else equally horrible to ruin the quilt I had worked 7 months on. I'm glad to report that the color catcher I tossed in was a dark blue and white parts of the quilt were white when it came out.
So after that incident, I vowed to pre-wash my fabric before starting any project. And as a side tip, before you wash your fabric, take a safety pin and pin the fabric layers together. Just accordion the fabric back and forth about 20-30 inches in length and pin with a safety pins in a few places so that it can't turn itself inside out then wash and dry. The pins will keep everything together and the fabric won't ball itself up around another bit of fabric which is a plus.
So back to this quilt...
After washing you should iron your fabric to get everything flat before cutting.
Here's some pictures of the layout sheets for the units and templates for cutting. There are a lot of units and templates to cut out for this quilt and that's why it took me so long to get everything ready.
And before you do any cutting make sure you read the instructions thoroughly for each booklet or section you're working on.
But first I made a fabric key for each unit. There is a key in each of the booklets but I went with note cards instead just to keep my original in tact. So I wrote down the booklet number, unit, the background fabric with a piece of the fabric as well as well as my accent fabric 2A-2F along with a piece of fabric. This way there should be no confusion as to which fabric goes where.
The instructions will tell you how much fabric to cut, stack them rights sides up, then lay the cutting sheet on top and cut the various pieces with your rotary cutter. The instructions will even tell you how to label your bags and which bags the cut pieces go into. Just go slowly and follow the instructions.
It's also a good idea to clip/safety pin your individual stacks together then put them into the labeled bag with the paper unit.
After all the cutting of the layout sheets and fabric, the units will come together very quickly and then you just have to sew the units together in the right order.
Next up, is putting together some of the units.
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