Progress Report: Greening of the Batt

I've designed and gotten the blocks for the yellow monochromatic challenge assembled.

I've quilted and made the binding for UFO # 6 - and hope by monday to have that done.  To get there I had to come up with batting for the 36" quilt and I did it by salvaging(aka as greening, lol) some batting from my batt bag.  I'll never understand why batting companies can't come up with more usable sizes of batting than what they sell(52 x 64 would be my preferred size - what's yours?), but then I guess it would be too hard to come up with all the sizes we need.  So I usually have strips of batting left over which I save.  I'm sure you must too cuz we're always saving scraps of fabric, aren't we?

So I went through the bag and pulled out batt strips of the same kind of batting and laid them out on the floor.  I had 3 strips and one small square of fabric which when laid out gave me a 38" overall square.  Taking these to my cutting table I added the square to one strip to make it long enough.  I learned this method from Marti Michell in her book:  Machine Quilting in Sections  It's a great book. So first I overlapped the two sections I wanted to join, and with my rotary cutter cut a wavy line in the center of the overlap.

Here's what they look like separated. 
Throw away the bits left over from the cut overlap and fit the two piece together again.

Now I take a strip of fusible interfacing and lay it over the cut.
Here I'm showing you the piece longer than the batting but that is just to show the interfacing.  When I iron it on, the top edge meets the top edge of the batting and the bottom edge is trimmed to the bottom edge, and one can hardly see it.  Now I have a piece long enough to use for my 38" batting square.  I attached the strips to the larger rectangle in the same way, and I had my batting for my ufo sandwich.
I know others just line up the two sections and zigzag them together, but the edges are never straight enough and I got bumps here and there and with hi loft batting the zigzag stitch tended to flatten the batting at the seam.  This way one can't even tell where the joints are. 

7 comments:

  1. yep I'm one who zig zags. I have my short rolls of batting and I always have to sew them together to use them. And it doesn't matter what size they make; I always need a different size! LOL

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  2. I've seen this before. Thanks for the reminder!
    Donna

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  3. Angie, I do like the idea of joining the pieces like that, haven't come across that before.

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  4. talk about duh moments...I never thought of fusable to keep the batting together while I sewed...Thankyou!

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  5. I would like number 1, set 3,4, number 11 and 13.

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  6. That is a great idea! I'm going to try it!

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  7. I have been saving and using my leftover batting and use them in baby quilts by zig zagging them together. i just haven't been cutting them in curves and using iron interfacing to hold them together. I bet this will make it smoother seams than what i have had in past. I will try it on next small quilt to see how it works out for me. Thanks for the good idea.

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Thank you for stopping by. It's always nice to hear from you. I try to reply to each and every one of you, but sometimes life gets in the way. I hope you understand. Blessings.

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