Monday, April 27, 2015

Want some salad with that quilt?

This past winter I did a trunk show and spoke about preparing your quilt for long arm quilting.  The main point was...you get back what you give.  If you give your quilter a wonky quilt...you will get back a wonky quilt. 

I was talking about how to put on borders to prevent that lettuce leaf look.  People didn't seem to understand.  Adding borders is where you should try your best to square up an un-square quilt. 

I am not going to explain how-to....but I am going to show you what a 'lettuce leaf border' looks like. 

I made this quilt over the winter....and even included a few pictures as I went.

As I was making it I think I wrote about all the trouble I was having making the blocks square.  I couldn't, for the life of me, get a good measure of the edges for the borders so I put it away.  Then after buying a longer tape measure I pulled it back out.  Still, I just couldn't get a good measure but had run out of projects in Florida so went ahead and added borders. 

I knew they were not square and would have NEVER taken that poor quilt top to someone else to quilt. 

However, since I do my own quilting, on the frame it went. 

I managed to work out almost all of the problems except for this one area. (Plus a couple tucks quilted in that I couldn't get a good picture of.  Hopefully that's a sign that they really don't show.)


This is what a 'lettuce leaf' border looks like. 

The over-all quilt is not bad...but that one edge just couldn't be flattened. 


Back when I was making it I wrote about how the center square was too large.  I couldn't figure out where the problem was since I thought I was using the Square in a Square ruler and pattern correctly.  



Over all....I love the quilt.  It just isn't going to hang in a show any time soon! 

Also, this is the quilt that used the same line of fabric as the 1600 quilt I showed in my last post.  Beautiful soft Fig Tree fabrics I bought quite a few years ago.  I don't remember the line, though.  If anyone really wanted to know I could go see if I have a salvage in my bin. 

Pam




1 comment:

  1. I think it looks beautiful, Pam! But, then again I'm no quilter--I know I would have a tough time getting the corners square on a quilt--I can't even do it on some of my little ornament flat finishes :)

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