Just a quick “business-y” note:

I’ll be…yippeeee!!!!!….. heading off to a workshop at ProChem in Fall River, Mass., next week. I’m taking the second week of Color Mixing for Dyers with Carol Soderlund. I head down on Monday (and hope to stop at the new Ikea near Boston en route), about a 6 hour drive if I were to go non-stop (not!). I have blogposts set to publish while I’m gone….

The next set of posts will be closeups of the pieces at Zoot Coffee House (see earlier post dated October 3rd). If anyone is interested in purchasing one, just drop me an e-mail either through a comment here or via the contact me link on my website (look up at the top menu bar for the hotlink). I’m not sure if I’ll have internet while in Fall River, so if you don’t hear from me until I get home next weekend, it means no Wi-Fi!

Finally, Dianne in Annapolis had a great question: how exactly do I mount those pieces on the canvas? Perfect for a tutorial. PLUS, I had mounted the pieces I made for the two “On the Edge” articles in Quilting Arts Magazine (about finishing the edges of quilts) and wanted to blog about display alternatives. So, when I get back, I promise to show a couple of ways to do this. I really gotta convince a publisher to let me do edge finishes and display alternatives as a book, or else self-publish! Too many ideas, never enough time. Anyway, keep popping back in for more good stuff –with pictures– starting tomorrow!

Last week I made my journal quilt, and tried a new-to-me technique: screening with Thermofax screens. My attempts to get the screens “burned” at the local tattoo place didn’t work (he had a Vista machine, not one of the 3M, so it didn’t work with my screen materials). SO, I mail ordered from Flying Images (check at the bottom of the page here, on Jane Dunnewold’s site–click on suppliers then scroll down). Talk about FAST service… I e-mailed and called on a Monday morning to see if she could do a quick job (I had been told she has one-day turnaround), e-mailed her jpegs that morning, and by suppertime the screens were made and in the mail…WOWIE!

In the photo you’ll see her printouts of my images of origami-cranes and, on the bottom half of the second screen, a design I did up printing with half of a sliced white onion. Because I was sub-dividing the screens into smaller pieces, I framed them up myself…some with purchased white plastic frames, the others with cereal box and duct tape.

I used textile paints to screen onto fabric for the journal quilt. This year, instead of doing one journal 8 1/2 x 11 inches each month, we are to do one quilt 17×22 inches (the equivalent of four pieces of paper) using at least three techniques from the Creative Quilting Book (which I really am going to review, soon I hope). We can’t share the journals with you, but I can share these faxes and some playing around that I did before beginning my 2007 Journal (which went in the mail on Tuesday… two full weeks early!).

This first piece is a pastel batik. Along one edge, you can see where I daubed paints testing for the right color. Around the edges I tried out the cranes in various colors. When I blobbed the blue paint on the screen, I had rinsed my brush and it was a bit wet, leading to too-thin paint that bled under the screen; lesson learned! In the center, using low-contrast metallic green (Lumiere paint) and gold (also Lumiere) I screened the onions… oh OW am I gonna love using this one for subtle background texture:

This second piece is one I gave to Kathy, since it is her (and my) favorite turqoises and teals. I began with a piece of my hand-dyed fabric…one that admittedly was a bit lacking in oomph. As in blah. So I used Jacquard Textile paint (the white), then mixed some Setacolor (a dark-ish teal) with some metallic (I think it was Pebeo / Setacolor also) along with a bit of white to get the middle-value screened onions, then more of the same but less white for the darker value. I was thinking of adding a bit of gold, but Kathy is really good at painting on fabric, so told her to take this piece and feel free to add to it and play with it:

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

The following tutorial builds on the article published in the August/September 2007 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine. The Pillowcase (or bagged back, or escape hatch) finish for a small art quilt is simply a one-piece facing that covers the entire back of an art quilt. This method is useful if you have lots of knots or carried threads that you wish to cover, for example after extensively beading a piece. For larger quilts (or even small ones) you may not wish to cover the entire back. Instead, you can use facings. On a quilt with straight edges, like Koi, you can use a straight strip of cloth as I did here on the back / under / second side of this quilt. However, just like a dress neckline, facings work well on curved and irregular shapes. From the front, you can’t tell if this quilt is a Pillowcase backing or a faced edge:

Facings:
Borrowed from dressmaking, a facing is simply a piece of fabric that echoes the outside edges that is turned completely to the back side of a quilt. Large and small quilts with irregular edges are great candidates for facings!

1. Cut a strip of fabric that extends ½ inch beyond the outside outermost edge and 2-plus inches towards the center of the quilt from the innermost “innie”.

2. Pin the facing to the quilt top, right sides together, on the FRONT side of the quilt.
3. Sew a ¼ seam (photo below, left)

4. Trim excess fabric from the seam allowance.
5. Clip /notch curves, clip inside corners and trim outside corners.

6. Press the seam as stitched. Fold facing over the seam allowance and press again.

7. Edgestitch facing to seam allowance a scant 1/8” from seam line; this will encourage the seam allowance to stay put and not try to roll back to the front. (photo above right)
8. Fold facing to the back, “favoring” the edge. The little bit of yellow-green that you see in the photo below is the “favored” edge, which is a bit of the front rolled to the back.

9. Iron the seam allowance and facings towards the center of the quilt. (See Step 9, above)

10. Turn under the edge of the facing and stitch in place. See the photo about edgestitching to see the turned, pinned edge.

11. Repeat on the other sides, turning under the short ends of the facing and stitch down to create a completely finished facing.

The double-fold bias binding with a mitered corner is probably the most familiar edge finish for contemporary quilts. In the set of mini-quilts I made for my forthcoming article on bindings in Quilting Arts magazine (August 2008), I created an outside edge that includes corners, a point, and inside and outside curved edges which covers most of the challenges you will face.

I hope you’ll check the forthcoming issue (due on stands and in mailboxes near you at the very end of July and early August) for more details. Because there is only so much space available, they didn’t have room to include instructions for “any-width” bias binding, only 1/4″ bias binding. I actually prefer this technique to the one described in the article, so you have my permission to make ONE copy of this blogpost, for you personal use ONLY (since I make a living, albeit modest, teaching and selling quilts, thank you in advance for respecting my copyright!).

As soon as the article is out, I’ll insert a picture of the mini-quilt here. In the meantime, the close-up above of a good mitered binding will have to do! Thanks for understanding!Cut your binding strips SIX times the width of the desired binding, plus ¼” (or up to ½” extra if you’d like a little more wiggle room). For a binding that finishes at 3/8” that is [(6 x 3/8) + 3/8 = 18/8 + 2/8 = 20/8 or] 2 ½ inch wide strips. Sew your binding strips together with a ¼” seam allowance until you have the length of your quilt perimeter plus several inches. The seams are on the straight grain, so when folded they run at an angle to the side of the quilt (making them less noticeable). Fold the strip in half lengthwise, finger-pressing or lightly pressing with an iron.

Think Boomerang: first the binding goes away, then it comes back:

1. Sew binding strip to the quilt edge, beginning at least four to six inches from a corner, and leaving a tail of about four to six inches (on large quilts, 12 inches or more is better), figure 1. In North and South America, Europe, and Africa, since we read from left to right and top to bottom, I like to start the binding on the lower left side, where the join is relatively unnoticed as the eye travels in its accustomed path across a quilt. Loosely run the binding strip around the quilt to make sure a seam doesn’t land on a corner (too much bulk); if it does, adjust your starting point slighly.

2. When stitching is about 2 inches from corner, fold the binding strip back on itself exactly on the edge of the quilt and finger press. You may wish to mark with a pin or chalk to see the line better. Diagrams 2

3. Fold the binding strip UP so that the marked line is now exactly even with the top edge of the quilt; finger press a crease at the 45 degree line. Mark with chalk on the inside of the binding if you need to improve visibility. Diagram 3

4. Continue to sew the seam until you reach the 45 degree chalk line. Backstitch 3 or four stitches. Diagram 4.

5. Pull the quilt out from under presser foot and (this is the boomerang part) : first fold the binding away on the marked lines, then back down so that the binding turns the corner and goes down the next side. Diagram 5.

6. Stitch from the very outside edge of the quilt down the next side. Diagram 6.

7. Repeat at the other corners.

8. Stop stitching about 4-6 inches from where you began.

After you have used this method enough, you will be able to fingerpress and eyeball the corner turns instead of marking.