First I taped the back to the living room floor. Smoothed the wadding onto it and basted the two together. I'd decided not to baste the top mainly to avoid putting unecessary holes in it and also as it lies flat I didn't see the need.
Next step was to lie the top on top of these two layers and at this point I did tack through the three layers just around the outside. Once this was done I decided to quilt the two outer rows on each side before lifting the whole thing off the floor and removing the tape.
It was a strange feeling as I lifted it up. This is usually the moment when after all the back breaking basting you get the reward of finally seeing and handling a quilt, as opposed to a top on its own. The Sampler is a quilt and it isn't. As I've continued to handle it while stitching the rows of quilting it has definitely become to feel more like a textile.
Here are the threads I'd put aside, in order as I embroidered the rows, for the rows of quilting stitches.
So far so good. So I removed the tape and lifted the whole thing up. Mmmm.... not so flat as I thought it would be. Even here in the photo you can see how it's moving in waves!
The problem is the T-shirt material which stretches and contracts as it wishes. On purpose I hadn't stretched the back too much when I taped it down. I'm hoping that the added pieces of posters in the rows with the T-shirt will help to keep the back in shape.
At this stage just a bit exhausted from crouching down basting and quilting I reckoned I'd call it a day.
I lay the quilt on my work table and covered it with my large cutting board and practically every heavy quilt book that I own. Knowing I wouldn't get back to it for at least four or five days I reckoned I'd manage to flatten it.
I removed the books and there it was all lovely and flat. By the end of the morning I'd finished all the quilting rows.There was quite a bit of swearing involved, once again due to the T-shirt material. It was ***** hell to sew through, even the parts not printed on. One needle totally bent and even the next one was in poor shape by the end. I also gave in about putting unecessary holes through the paper and added some pins just to even out the waves as I quilted.
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| Pins and two needles |
By two o'clock the 99 rows were complete and the quilt was only a little bit wavy. So I put it back under all the books for a few hours.
.
And if only that had been the end.
I'm putting a mustard/gold cotton double binding around the quilt. A double binding because it's what I always use and the colour because it frames the quilt but doesn't close it in as a black binding would have done.
I cut the sides and for once I had four perfect 90 degree corners.
Now to the machine, easier said than done. It's not a normal quilt which folds up and moves through the machine on its own. In the end I needed an assistant and even though it's a small piece by the end we both had aching shoulders.
And here's the quilt with the binding almost all the way around and if you look closely you can see it's not flat.The binding exacerbated the problem. For some reason it went on tighter than the quilt and so is now pulling the quilt tighter, just the opposite of what I wanted.
Aching shoulders and just a bit fed up, there was nothing for it except to take all the binding off. Almost three metres of stitching to take out!
So now it's back under all the books, except that now there's a perforated line around it all from where I've taken the stitching out. I'm going to hand sew the binding on - has to be quicker than what I've just done - I hope that this way the binding will be more relaxed and follow the quilt instead of pulling it tight. I expect using bias binding would help too, but I haven't got enough fabric.
Then all I'll have to do is stitch the binding to the back and embroider my initials and the date. The end is in sight. Think I might have thought this before.
Now where's that bottle of wine.
