This was a lovely little project I was so excited to work on. My youngest nephew just turned one (my little brother has a baby!!) and I was looking for a personal gift to add to the "loud, noisy toy" that every auntie is obligated to give.
I found these beautiful fabrics at a local fabric store. I love the whimsy of the top and bottom, along with the contrast the black and white stripes will add to the binding.
Whole cloth quilts are exactly that, a whole piece of fabric without all the piecing of a typical quilt. For this quilt, I used one meter of fabric on the top, and another on the bottom. The quilt binding was made from 2.5 inch strips of the striped fabric. Say that 10 times fast! lol!
To insure my binding strips were the direction I wanted, using the width of fabric meant I had to piece together several pieces together. To do this, position the fabrics right sides together at a 90 degree angle and sew diagonally. Trim the seam allowance to a 1/4 inch and press the fabric open at the fold. I made enough of this to measure around the outside of the whole cloth quilt, plus a little extra "just in case".
Next, I made my quilt sandwich. I was able to lay it out on my kitchen island and hold in place with some low tack painters tape. First, I placed the bottom of the quilt right side down.
Then, I added the quilt batting and finally the top quilt fabric, right side up. Using quilt pins, or curved safety pins, I pinned my quilt sandwich together so it wouldn't shift when I stitched through all layers with the sewing machine.
I probably spent as much time picking the right thread colour for my quilting as I did picking out my fabric selections. I love this Madeira thread as it's strong, so doesn't break easily, which is great for the repeated wear and tear and washings this baby quilt will get. And, it comes in a wide variety of colours! Any guesses on which one I decided to go with?
I'm a stickler for straight lines so I laid out my quilt grid using a chalk marker.
With everything clearly laid out, I set to work on the quilting to hold all layers together. I love using the Janome AcuFeed Flex Dual (Twin) Foot Holder with AD Foot on my Janome Skyline S9. This ensures both the top and bottom layers of the quilt move consistently and evenly under the foot, preventing unnecessary gathering or bunching of the fabric.
When I'm stitching a quilt top, I like to increase my stitch length to accentuate the quilting. This is really easy to do on the LCD touch screen of the Janome Skyline S9. Near the bottom of the screen, to the right of the presser foot icon is the stitch width, and stitch length adjustment. The typical suggested stitch length is 2.4 stitches per inch, but since I'm stitching through two layers of fabric and batting, I adjusted the stitch length to 4.5 stitches per inch. As a general rule, the thicker the layers, the longer the stitch.
How fun is this?!
Finally, my quilt is really for the binding. There are a few ways the Janome Skyline S9 can handle the bulk of the quilt sandwich and the binding fabric. For this quilt, I decided to use the Janome AcuFeed Flex Single Foot Holder and VD Foot, which is approximately a generous 1/4 inch wide. It helps make sure all the fabric layers move evenly under the foot without bunching or gathering.
I just love how this all came together!
I can't wait for my little nephew to wrap himself up in this little quilt!
Have you made a whole cloth quilt before? What is your favourite sewing gift to make?
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