Friday, January 18, 2013

"Quilting for Dummies"



So as you know from our previous blog post we have our fabric, muslin, and stuff.  The only thing we didn’t have was a walking foot for our project.  Looking at our timeline to get these FOUR quilts done we had to start now, walking foot or not. 

                It was time to trim the fabric, make it even and use the spray adhesive to put the backing and the muslin together.  We were not sure how we were going to do this. Our table wasn’t big enough (or so we thought).  We stood there for a few minutes and decided we would just do it on the floor in our living room. I will tell you that gluing the muslin to the backing was a lot harder than I thought it would be, especially when the floor of your living room is consumed by this fabric. It took us THREE hours to cut the fabric and glue it together.  We were so tired and looked at the clock and saw it was past midnight. We sighed and folded up the now glued together fabric and went to bed, for tomorrow was going to be sewing day!

                The fabric was ready, the strips were arranged in the order we were going to be putting them on, it was go time! It was time to sew on the first two strips. We were making sure we had everything in order and on the table where we were working when I noticed my husband’s iPad was propped up on the table.
“Honey, we should move that so it isn’t in the way” I stated, concerned for the well-being of the iPad.  I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, but I didn’t want it to get accidentally knocked on the floor.
To my surprise his response was…

“No I need it up here?” He said while getting the sewing machine set up to thread the bobbin. 

I was so confused, so I went over to see what he had up on it. 

In big bold Print across the iPad was QUILTING FOR DUMMIES! 

I laughed at the irony in that title only because it fit rather well for us! So this was how we were going to do this and learn how to quilt, via the Internet! 

                The Sewing Machine was ready, the needle was threaded and we were ready to go. Now, what was convenient was the first strip was sprayed with the adhesive and glued on; the other strip was not as convenient. I told my husband that we should probably pin it on so it will stay in place.  He did, but they were so far apart from each other I wasn’t convinced it was going to work right, but I let him do what he needed to do.  

                Alright, on with the sewing! We started the stitch off, he does a few forward and then goes over them again backwards (per the quilting for dummies website) and then he was off!  I looked at it and the thread doesn’t look like it is doing much of anything after the first few stitches. It wasn’t sewing anything together.  I told him to stop and we looked at it and sure enough it wasn’t catching the bobbin. So we took the fabric off the sewing machine and undid what we had done and messed with the sewing machine a little more.  It was catching the bobbin, but the problem was once we started sewing it wouldn’t pull the thread up. 

My first thought was, “Great our freaking machine is broken!”  At first all I could do was watch him mess with it to see why it wasn’t working! I was holding my breath, praying he wouldn’t decide to take the sewing machine apart to see if he could fix it. I decided, since he had his internet up with Quilting for Dummies, that I would do an internet search for “reasons the bobbin won’t thread”. To my surprise I found the answer!!!  Bottom line, the needle was dull or bent or something like that.   Soooo we changed the needle hoping that was the case; sure enough it was working!

                So we started back at it again.  A few stitches forward, then again backwards and then once again we were off.  All of a sudden I hear a loud thump, the sewing machine jumped and my husband yelled. He fed his thumb into the machine and broke the needle! 

“Seriously!” was all I could think.

Don’t worry his thumb was fine, but the needle wasn’t. Thank goodness we had one more!  I looked at him and told him “You better not break this one, cuz its all we have!” He rolled his eyes and got the sewing machine ready and took the stitching out AGAIN (I wasn’t sure that was necessary but he did)!

Okay, so round 3! We do the forward stitch and the backward stitch and then we were off!  I was holding my breath.  We got about a quarter down and we were finding that feeding this through was really hard, so me being the helpful wife I am decided to sit on the opposite end of the table and reach across and help “guide” the fabric through the Machine! Basically being the walking foot!  So I was on one end gently pulling it through and he was on the other end pushing it through and sewing it together.
Please see picture below! (picture is a reenactment of the method used!)



Yes, we really did it this way with EVERY strip we put on this quilt! However, he did learn he needed more pins to hold it together simply because the fabric stretched and it was just a pain in the rear to work with!
                 
So in 4 hours we got 4 strips on! See below picture!  Not bad for our first go at it huh?!



It was again midnight and we were exhausted.  We thought it best to continue again the next night. 

The next day was a Saturday and my husband was determined to get all the strips on this quilt. Of course I told him we should probably go and find this walking foot because it was only going to get harder as the quilt got heavier with every piece of fabric we put on it.  So we went out for the hunt again! Still no luck in finding one, so we were stuck doing it our way!  I will tell you that it really is a good arm workout. My muscles were killing me already from pulling it through. 

                So we continued on, strip by strip, until we completed it late Saturday night! He was so proud of himself! I was just glad it was over!  He decided we would clean up the edges in the morning. 

                Sunday morning he woke up, skipped his coffee and went right to the cutting board.  I could tell that he was getting really anxious to finish this first quilt!  I look over at him as he is cutting and see all these strips falling off while he is all covered in fuzz.  I just knew that he was butchering this thing that we just spent countless hours on.  After a short while, he shouted that he finished trimming the edges and ran into the living room to show me.

                He was so proud of this quilt! “Honey take a picture and send it to your mom” he yelled at me with a big grin on his face! It was like watching a child who just built a large tower out of LEGO’s!

                I laughed and took the picture (shown below) and sent it to my mom!


                Every five minutes after that he kept asking “what did she say? Does she like it?” 

                My mom didn’t respond for a few hours so you know how frustrated I got with him after about the 5th time asking!  When my mom FINALLY responded I was so relieved that she thought it looked great!

                When I told him, I thought maybe he would chill a bit, but he didn’t! It only made him talk about how awesome a job he did! (I’ll admit, he did do a great job, but he didn’t need to continue on about it!)  But now was time for the ever dreaded binding of the quilt. 

                We sat and watched the instructional video again on the binding. He was ready to get to it! He cut the fabric into the strips and followed each step in the video.  I was very grateful that each step of this process was also written out so I could talk him through it! When the binding was done we both let out a sigh of relief because it was over and then we looked over at the 3 kits that still remained. I did not want to do anymore, this one was enough! But thankfully my husband was determined and as he said “he was really starting to enjoy it” 

                He kept going, following the same process, the only difference was that after the second quilt we realized the Mom was right; we needed a real cutting mat. So we went to get one, and still searched for the walking foot, which we never did find.

                He got so good at doing the quilts he no longer needed my help (at least that’s what he told me, I think it was his way of telling me to stay out of his way), he had it down to an art. So, no walking foot and no me and he finished all the quilts by Christmas Eve!  He did it! They were ready just in time!

                Below are pictures of the completed quilts! The kids loved them!

This was a fun experience but I don’t think I was ever meant for quilting! My husband, on the other hand, is already talking about what he wants to do next! 

I hope you all enjoyed my story! It was truly a learning experience! I have more appreciation for what my mom does and can truly understand how it could take a long time to get one quilt done.  If it wasn’t for my husband I would have stopped after the first needle broke! 






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