Hi everyone - Happy Friday. Happy to reach the end of a very busy and productive week. Not much on the sewing front but I had a mini-trip to Glasgow with my daughter at the beginning of the week.
She is moving to a new job as part of her graduate training scheme and will be spending 18 months working in Scotland. I was actually born in Glasgow but left as a child (no trace of an accent now), so it was all new to both of us.
Have to say, despite cold, wind and rain, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and I think she will have a great time. We found a lovely flat-share (fingers crossed while the paperwork goes through), stayed in a nice hotel, and walked and walked.
More mother-daughter time followed when we got home as she suddenly wanted a new cover for a cushion she made when she was about thirteen (where have those ten years gone?). She is not much of a sewer as she has always been busy with sport and study, but she can do it when she tries, so this is very much a joint project, and she wanted me to post it on the blog. Though she didn't want to appear in person!
I did the calculations and cutting out; she sewed the patches together; I added the backing and binding and even tackled machine binding for the first time. Having always been a bit of a purist about hand stitching the binding, I was quite pleased with how this went.
Here is a tutorial by Rita of Red Pepper Quilts which covers making a straight grain doublefold binding as well as the machine stitching side of things. It is quite old now (2009) but covers all important points. I generally cut my bindings 2 1/4" and join the ends with a diagonal seam in much the same way as Rita. So very happy to recommend this method if you are new-ish to quilt binding.
I used Clover wonder clips to hold the binding in place rather than pins which Rita shows - probably because Clover hadn't invented the clips in 2009! Here's a fun video of the clips in use; I must say I hadn't noticed the little dots on the reverse were 1/4" guide marks - you learn something new every day!
The cushion is not large, just 12" finished, so the maths was pretty easy: 4" centre square, 2" x 4" flying geese for star points and 2" squares everywhere else (add 1/2" to all these finished measurements for cutting).
My daughter is pleased as Punch with her achievement, so maybe she will become a fully fledged (aka obsessed) quilter in the future, when she has more time.
And here's a picture of my new coffee mug which I think is a pretty good match for the colours of my new blog heading - do you agree?
Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it Up Friday - love Amanda Jean's finishes and her photography. She also has a binding tutorial - the link is in Rita's tutorial. They both produce really good quality work and I admire that so much. It's usually just as easy to do it right as wrong provided you have good instructors and instructions.
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