Today’s tutorial will add a bit more depth to the section of the Quilting Arts article on edge-finishes published in their August/September 2007 issue. Please order a copy here so you can have the whole article, then feel free to refer to this blogpost for more in-depth explanations! I hope someday to convince a publisher to let me do a book!!!!

To “cut” your strips, place your synthetic sheer fabric on top of an old storm window or a piece of glass from a photo frame (tape the edges of the glass to avoid cuts). A cutting mat under the glass gives you lines to follow. Secure the fabric with tape at each end.

On a corner, test your heat tool to make sure it is hot enough to cut / sear the edges.

Cut your binding at least 1½ inches wider than the desired width. For a ½” edge, cut your strip 2 ½ to 3 inches.

Hints: if you sear too close to the stitching, your sheer may pull loose. Also, you might melt your threads–eeek! Practice on a scrap and on the back side of the quilt before working on the front. Keep the heat tool somewhat vertical or you may accidentally melt the binding with the hot shaft of the tool. This polka-dot look could be really fun (what if?!) on the right quilt. Here’s what not to do:

I hope these extra photos help explain how to have fun playing with sheers as a binding! If you have any questions, just ask.

Cheers, Sarah

Joshua is making slow but steady progress. On Wednesday, he got out of bed for the first time in 9 days and into a wheelchair for a 20 minute “tour” of the Pediatric floor. It took 45 minutes to get from bed to chair. On Thursday, it only took 15 minutes to make the transfer, and he sat up (too long!) three hours…about 90 minutes playing video games, then two friends came and he was up nearly another 90 minutes. That had him wiped out for the day, but he did it, and with much less pain. Hoooray! The peds ward has some totally cool murals. Here is Joshua in the SUNNY (and on this day warm…it was 90+ degrees outside and not a cloud in sight except on the walls) atrium and look at the cool clouds and the critters in the clouds:

That was Joshua’s IV pole, nurses, and Joshua in the wheelchair under the clouds mural in the photo above. Here is the other cloud mural and several of the smaller pictures scattered around the floor:

Here’s the doorway to Joshua’s room, each doorway has a different “something” painted above or next to it:

The last one, of course, is because we are in Boston Celtics territory, The Eastern Maine Medical Center is in Bangor, Maine, where Stephen King lives (well, he has a couple of houses but he’s a Mainer forever, and now owner of the Red Sox). Anyway, we root for the Sea Dogs (the Red Sox minor league team out of Portland) and the Boston teams and, as the saying goes, whoever beats the Yankees.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a quilty post with some good news!

Requiescat in Pace

Thomas Joseph Maleady II, born July 27, 1933, died June 17, 2007

This morning at 6:50 a.m. Pacific coast time, my half-brother, nicknamed Macho by his Mexican nannies (at the time Daddy was a US diplomat assigned to Mexico with his Cuban-Costa Rican wife, Emma) because of his dark skin and wavy hair, joined Daddy and Charlie, my other half-brother who died of cancer in 1982.

Macho died in Joyce’s arms, his wife of 40+ years…. I remember Joyce visiting when I was in first or second grade, and that was 42 years ago. He has been in “iffy” health for years, but the aneurism near his one barely-functioning kidney (which has been beyond ready-to-blow stage for at least a year) had begun to leak; he miraculously survived the emergency surgery last Saturday, but has been sliding downhill since Monday. We are blessed that he had good care, good doctors, has been on meds to alleviate pain and anxiety this past week, and a good wife to care for him.

Here is a picture of Daddy (on the left), Macho and Joyce in 1986 (not sure where the Lodge is!):

and here is my favorite picture of Daddy and the three of us, his kids… I’ve shared this before but here it is again: the one I like to think of as “three gangsters and a little girl”: Left to right it is Macho (known to friends and co-workers as Tom, TomJ, or just “T”), Daddy, and Charlie (Chuck to everyone outside of the family) and me, down in front in the middle:

I told Joyce when she called this morning with the news that I know what he’s doing…he’s up there telling jokes with Charlie and the three of them are laughing up a gale! I’ll miss the sound of his voice the most….

The Koi quilt is done (well…except for the sleeve and label, what else?!!!), the photos have been taken, then entry form for Houston filled out and mailed in. So now I get to share the quilt with my local guild chapter, my friends, and wait until August to see if they get into Houston. And in the meantime, they will travel to Augusta, Maine, for the annual Maine Quilts show in late July. All of the photos should be clickable to make them larger so you can see more detail.

When deciding on how to make the water, I looked at Pauline Burbidge‘s water quilts, thinking they were what I had in mind for the water, but it turned out not so. So I just went ahead and made what I did…then I realized that the pattern is very much a typical Japanese style design for water.

And here are some detail shots of the koi, the quilting and the beading. The beads represent the surface disruption / rippling caused by the movement of the fins and tails just beneath the surface.

I took the pictures before sewing on the hanging sleeve because I didn’t want the quilt view on the back marred by the sleeve. This is the reverse side…as if you were lying on the bottom of the pond looking up at the sky. You’ll notice that you are looking at the bellies of the koi, and the fractured sunlight streaming through the water, with the branches above visible through the water:

If I had a detail shot, (which I don’t) you could see that the top facing isn’t really a facing, but a narrow hanging sleeve that is the same width as the facings on the side and bottom. For quilt shows I will sew on the regulation 4″ hanging sleeve, but when it has done it’s quilt-show-journey, I will buy a metal slat, drill holes in the ends, and slide it into this top facing. That way, the quilt can be hung with either side out … or both… think room partition? Here’s one more (sideways…dontcha love blogger?) closeup of one of the koi on the reverse / back side:

I think I’d like to do another koi quilt (or two), not so large, maybe just one koi, but with overhanging branches, shadows from the branches on the water, and maybe raindrops forming circles/ripples on the water……

As for technique: I painted with a very thin wash of irridescent paint over my own hand-dyeds for the fish, which were quilted separately, then appliqued to the already-quilted surface of the pond (the ones on the back by machine, the ones on the front by hand). I pinned VERY carefully to get the fins and tails to line up on both sides of the fabric and quilted them in one pass. The background is fused, using my own hand-dyes and commercial batiks. The fins and tails are multiple layers of sheers (three different ones…a white, a cream and a pale gray for the white fins, and a totally tacky red floral for the orange-red, but which cuts up nicely!). I used Misty Fuse for all the fusing, including on the sheers.

Now, to crash on the sofa before heading to Saco, Maine, tomorrow where I will be doing a demo of machine quilting at the Art Quilts Maine exhibit at the Saco Museum. Hope to post pics on Monday or so…. Thanks for surfing back in to see the final result. Cheers, Sarah

A lot of us have enjoyed the recent trend in postcards…me included (making and receiving!). Well, at our recent Frayed Edges meeting, Kathy was giving away two spool racks, and I got one of them. Of course, with my thread collection this rack might manage a single in-progress quilt, so I had a better idea: Postcards!

Like what I’ve done?