Monday, December 31, 2012

Quilted Table Cloth

 
Quilted Tablecloth
 
 
This is what happens when you cut up too much fabric and have a stash of fabric and ‘scrap’ wadding left over. A tablecloth is born!
 
Again it’s the French Braid design. (I know…I need to do something different already!) But in my defence this is part of my first commission piece/s and this is what was wanted.
 
 
 
There are four braids, edged in apricot linen and I’ve used a grey linen fabric as the binding.
For the quilting I’ve used an apricot thread in the stripling pattern. Some sections of this project were difficult to quilt due to the various types of fabric used. There are batiks, cottons, poly cottons and linen. Not ideal, but I’m still happy with the overall result.
As always, I intended to have all of the commission pieces finished to show off in my blog (and to hand over to my aunt who commissioned them). I still have 14 placemats and a table runner in various stages of being quilted to finish. So hopefully they’ll be the next blog post, as I’ve been making these for some time now and I’m sure my aunt thinks that I’ll never actually finish them.
 
 
My aunt provided all of the fabric that she wanted me to use and asked for the French Braid or Herringbone style of quilting, then sent me off on my task. So all I had to buy was the wadding and the threads.
 
 
The tablecloth is not quite square and measures 40 x 33 inches or 102 x 85cms. At a guess I’d say that there is approx. 140 rectangles used to make up the braids, with some of them being cut down to neaten up the braids.
The wadding that I’ve used is 100% Bamboo and was purchased in a bag pre-cut, which was enough to make a queen sized quilt; but will be just enough to finish all of the placemats and the table runner.
 
 
 
To baste the quilt I’ve laid down an old sheet, sprayed the trusty old '505 Spray and Fix' all over the wadding and then smoothed it in sections on to the backing, and then done the same with the quilt top. I then leave the item flat to allow it to dry before quilting it on the machine.
 
 
 
Quilting is always the fun part. Well now that I’m getting more practised at it, it is.

I’ve then trimmed the edges, sewed the binding, pinned it all up (to ensure that the joins in the binding don’t fall around the corners) Then I’ve sewed the binding on by machine and tacked the finished edges by hand  while relaxing in front of the TV.




Now I’m off to baste, quilt and bind that table runner and bind those placemats….