Inspiration comes from many places. The community quilt in the last blog was ready to quilt and I was thinking of ways to quilt it. My quick and easy way to quilt small quilts is in a grid with wavy lines. Three of my daughters came for a visit While they were here, they asked me if my grandmother had ever made a quilt, I just happen to have one of her quilts and brought it out for show and tell.
After they left, the quilt was folded and placed on a footstool. On top was the community quilt. As I looked at them from across the room, I noticed that the colors were similar, and they were both made from squares.
My grandmother’s quilt was tied, and she had hand embroidered a decorative stitch on all the seams. That is what I would do. Except, I would not take the time to hand embroider. Searching the built in embroidery stitches on my machine, I found one that was similar to my grandmother’s quilt. This was the inspiration that I was looking for.
The fabric on the back of the quilt is beautiful.
The community quilt is finished.
One thing that I would do different the next time is to machine embroider with a thicker thread so it would show better. I have some Sew Sassy from Superior Thread. It is an 11-weight thread. I’ll experiment with that thread the next time.
Inspiration keeps moving on to other thoughts.
The least favorite thing in quilting for me is basting the backing, batting and top of the quilt. I would either thread baste, or pin baste the quilt depending on how I felt at the moment. I saw a YouTube video about basting with Misty Fuse and thought I would try that method. It was so easy to do. I laid the batting on the ironing board first. I laid little torn pieces of Misty Fuse on the batting and added the backing. After this was pressed, I turned it over and did the same adding the Misty Fuse and the top. The package held together during all of the quilting. One corner was a little off at the end, but I was able to pull the package apart and iron it straight. This will be my new method of basting small quilts. There are no pins to remove while quilting or thread to get in the way.
This quilt was a joy to make. There is always something new to learn.
Have a great day and happy quilting.