Friday 27 July 2012

Gel pads needed!

The top layer of the quilt is finally finished. When that happens you breathe a sigh of relief and count the number of days that you have been lovingly working on it, and it's not that you are glad to be finished with that part, it just seems as you were never going to be finished; I think that is called 'impatient'.

Now comes the process of the sandwich (remember, not the eating type!). One thing needed is space, and a lot of it: you need enough space to lay out the top layer; the wadding (or batting as called in other countries); the under layer, which can be plain or decorative; and enough space to wander around the quilt smoothing out creases and straightening edges. If you don't possess a humongous table or know someone who does, an investment in knee pads is a good idea as you will be on your hands and knees for a good while, fixing the layers.

The quilt sandwich


Once the layers are fixed then quilting pins are needed to hold them together before it is tacked; these could be specialist bent safety pins or long pins with a cute little flower on the top.  The tacking takes forever and you realise why people quilt with the pins still attached. The tacking has to be in horizontal and vertical rows. The one plus which I can say about hand-sewing is that it is quite calming and relaxing - it should be recommended for those who suffer from hyper-activity!










Once this is all finished, The quilt is then rolled up, like a sausage, and ready for quilting on the sewing machine.

No comments:

Post a Comment