Quilty Pleasures

Hello friends, it's Horace here today, and probably will be for much of the blog postings from now on. The other bears have abandoned their blogging but I shall try and keep up with it.

I've been feeling in a stitchy mood of late. I made myself a quilt not so long ago, and was pleased enough with it to want to make another for the cub. I bought some purple fat quarters, which I cut into 8" squares with a quilting square, so much easier than trying to measure and paw cut 40 plus squares to an exact size. Once cut, I began to piece them all together in a random pattern. This part takes me ages, as I always find I have two matching squares next to each other. I then have to play quilty jigsaws until it looks as random as possible.



Once stitched together, I found the pattern had completely changed anyway, despite stitching row by row, then length by length. I think I inadvertently turn some of the rows before I stitch the length, oh well, it's random enough, if you ignore that pink line going on!




Every quilt needs binding, but it's so expensive to buy. I always make my own, out of cheap sheets bought from Asda ( other supermarkets are available!!) I bought myself a 2 1/2" ruler just for this purpose. Just in case you need to know, to make bias binding, you fold a sheet of fabric into a triangle, then cut down like so, this allows you to cut along the bias (meaning the fabric is stretchy, rather than taut.


Once I'd cut enough long strips to travel the length of the river Nile, I began to piece the strips together, to make one continuous strip of bias binding. This is done by putting right side to right side, at right angles like so....


I then sewed a straight line down the fabric


You should end up with this, cut off the excess fabric, taking care not to cut into your stitches.



Leaving you with a line of fabric. Press this for a smooth finish.


Here's my bias binding, I wonder, if I left one end at home, how far I would get with the rest of it? It is rather long.



I made sure I had enough to go all around my quilt... I did, and more, and more....


Next, I took my quilt top and used some temporary spray to adhere it to my cotton wadding.



I then added backing fabric - another sheet from Asda cut to size- and sewed in between all the lines of the squares, this took me ages, I only have small paws and the quilt was rather large.



Now it was back to the binding. I followed a Youtube tutorial for this, first I sewed the binding to the front of the quilt, leaving enough to fold over and hide the sewn line. I then flipped the quilt over, folded the bias binding tight, and began to sew. Next time I make a quilt, I may look for a tutorial for machine sewing the binding on front and back, as my paw sewing skills are not that good.


Anyway, I eventually completed the quilt, and presented it to the cub yesterday as an early birthday present. She seemed to like it, and hopefully it will keep her warm in the coming cold spell we've been promised!


With love from Horace.