Now to get the backing done and off to the quilter. I think I'll just have her do a big all over design since you really won't be able to see the quilting very well. What do you think?
I wanted to pass along some thoughts on making this huge quilt and working with these fabrics. First of all, I am SO in love with barkcloth now that I'm on the hunt! It's not easy to come by at a reasonable price for sure! Yikes! Have you looked on eBay??
Anyway, as I first told you, I paid no attention to the texture or content of these fabrics. They range from cotton quilt weight to pretty heavy drapery weight fabrics. Some are slick rayon. The only thing I will say is that the looser woven fabrics tend to stretch so you need to keep that in mind. Otherwise, sewing with them was no problem. Because of the weight, I ironed all the seams open as shown below. I just felt that they would be too thick to sew over if I pressed to one side as usual.
When I sewed the pieces together I used my seam ripper as a guide to push the seams to the correct side.
As you know, this thing is HUGE! It ended up about 105" x 108". I really dislike sewing LONG borders to a piece, so how I handled it was to border each 48" square on two sides before I joined them. I cut strips the full width of the fabrics to add to the borders and I wanted them to look like continuous pieces so I cut the border fabric where I needed to add to the 48" and then picked up the remaining piece of the strip to use on the next 48" square. So those border strips have a seam in them but it's hard to tell when you're looking at the quilt.
By doing this, I only had to sew ONE 108" seam when I pieced the two halves together! When I am working with long pieces and don't need to match seams, I use my mouth to put them together, don't you? (Disclaimer: You are seeing me at close to my scariest so beware!)
So that's it! Glad to have that piece done and move on to something else! Have a great weekend and we'll see you next week~
