Broken Bars: A Finish

Ta Da! One more Christmas prezzie struck off the list!

I talked about making this blue and orange lovely last week here. A few of you asked me to show you how I joined my Quilt As You Go rows and finished off the quilt. So here we go. First, I kept all of the rows labeled so that I kept my random scrappy business all straight (I know, pretty anal for random scrappy!).

Once I had all four rows done and trimmed I started joining them together. Simply put the right sides together and sew! Now if you are trying to apply QAYG to a project where seams need to match then you will likely have to stick to a 1/4" seam, which is fine, but in my case, nothing really had to line up and I was ok with losing an inch or so off of the length so I gave myself a 1/2" seam.

Having a 1/2" seam makes the next step a little easier. Using a hot steamy iron, iron open the seams. This helps reduce any bulk you have.

Here is the joined top laid out and getting a backing fitted up.

 

Once you have the top all ready and your backing all set ( I made a pieced backing, all from my stash I might add :)) baste using your preferred method - I am hooked on spray baste currently.

Now take the whole kit and caboodle back to the sewing machine and quilt across the seams where the rows were joined, again this will keep your bulk down. Now I was doing random wavy lines on this quilt, so I kept that up when I sewed over the seams, I just kept my wavy line tight and made sure I had good coverage over the seams. If you were not doing wavy lines, you could stitch in the ditch, or even sew a line on each side of the seam. Whatever floats your boat! Once all of the seams were done, I also added two additional quilting lines to each row. This basically means that the backing is joined to the front in approximately six inch intervals. More than enough to keep everything together.

Bind 'er up like you always would. As my guild mate Crystal says "Machine binding for the win!" and you are done! One fabulous QYAG quilt ready to put under the tree.

The quilt ended up being approximately 70 x 85, a nice cuddly size for a 12 year old who is already as tall as his Auntie!


One of my photo assistants. If it is on the ground, Orangie must get on it.

We have entered the time of short days around here in Nova Scotia. The days where getting decent quilt pictures is practically a miracle. So you can all expect lots of pics from the yard!

My other assistant, Charlie. He just ran around for 10 minutes like the devil was chasing him.
He needed a rest

Well, I hope you get a chance to incorporate more QAYG into your quilty journey. I have another project all lined up and ready to go :) Now, I must get going and head over to Sew Mama Sew. It's Great Big Giveaway Day. A great day to check out new blogs and maybe win some stuff!

 

Adrienne

 

Linking up at Stitch by Stitch for Anything Goes Mondays;  Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday; She Can Quilt for Scraptastic Tuesday and TGIFF!