New Quilting Toys

I’ve got  a brand new “toy!”  plus a new quilting technique I thought I’d share. The toy isn’t meant for quilting; it’s actually an applique template that you’re supposed to use to cut perfect, flowing leaves. But, I bought it just to make perfect flowing feather spines. I love it!

Marking a feather spine

This past week I finished quilting a custom quilt, and my new toy made it so easy to mark the spines with a nice curve–all I had to do was then fill in the feathers.  My favorite marking tool for light fabrics is a blue “mark b-gone” water erase pen.

On the white cream borders, I tried a new idea I saw a while ago on another quilt. Of course my memory was a little foggy, so I was making some of it up as I went along!  This technique worked so well I had several folks ask me if it was trapunto when they saw the finished quilt–and no, it isn’t!

I used a template to mark a rose  with my blue pen, then made a first pass through the border stitching on the lines from the template. Next I outlined the design with a 1/2″ echo. And then the fun began! I “scribble” stitched a back and forth line, filling in the echo. A little water squirt took out the marking, and I had a gorgeous border design. It came out pretty well, if I do say so myself!

Here’s one more photo of the border without the marking:

 

Posted by Karen