All Those Elephants, One Bite at a Time

I started working on the commission quilt top yesterday. I said to the husband that cutting into fabric that belongs to someone else—and that probably cannot be replaced—is way more nerve-wracking than cutting into my own fabric. I am moving at a slow and deliberate pace. I made sure that I knew what was happening with the pattern before I started, because the pattern includes instructions for more than one size. I did two rounds of pressing and cutting and that was it for yesterday. (When I said “slow and deliberate pace,” I wasn’t kidding.)

The commission quilt features a block known as “Delectable Mountains,” one I haven’t made before. Bonnie Hunter’s Scrappy Mountain Majesties quilt uses this block:

The fabrics I am using are batiks—something of a departure for me. They aren’t my favorite fabrics but it’s good to branch out once in a while.

I’ve also got two of the MCC comforters assembled for the comforter-tying party in a few weeks. I still have five to go but I need to retrieve more batting from the sewing room at church. We are trying a different technique for these comforters. Normally, we would layer a backing, batting, and a top—either a single piece of fabric or a pieced top—into a quilt frame and tie it on the frame. I would then bring the comforter home, trim the edges, attach binding, and sew the binding down. (I love to sew down binding so that’s why I volunteered for that part of the job.) We only have one quilt frame available for tying, however, and we’re hoping to do several comforters at one time at the party. Shirley’s sister had sent her a set of instructions for making the comforters “envelope style,” which is how they do it in their sewing circle. We ordered a bolt of 60” wide cotton flannel in a plaid pattern and a bolt of 58” wide poly/cotton broadcloth for the backing. (The total cost was about $150 for enough fabric and batting to make seven 60” x 80” comforters.) Last month at sewing, Elaine and I measured and cut fronts and backs for seven comforters.

To make the comforters, I lay the batting out on the floor of the bedroom, put the plaid flannel down on top of it, then put the broadcloth on top of the flannel. The broadcloth is actually a bit narrower than the flannel, which is a bonus for sewing because I can see and follow one of the straight lines in the flannel to make each seam. An 8” opening on one end is left unseamed for turning. Sewing the seams takes about 15 minutes. I’m doing them on the Janome with the even-feed foot engaged.

Once all the seams are done, I trim off the edges to make everything even, then trim the corners and turn the whole thing inside out. At that point, all I have to do is topstitch around the edge, which secures the batting and closes the opening. The comforter is now stable enough that a couple of people can sit around a table and knot it every 4” or so. (I chose a plaid pattern with a 4” repeat to make that part easy.) And it doesn’t require any binding when it’s done because the edges are already finished.

I’ve been trying to figure out if this way saves time. I think it does. Each comforter takes me about an hour to assemble. When we tie them in the frame at sewing, it takes 2-3 hours by the time we get the frame set up and the whole thing tied, and then it takes another couple of hours for me to sew down the binding. It would take less time if I sewed down the binding on the machine, but I am not as fond of the way that looks. Using a single piece of fabric rather than a pieced top definitely saves time.

[At the end of the day, it’s not always about saving time, though. I am very much a process person and I do some of these tasks the slow, old-fashioned way because it’s a form of relaxation for me.]

I’ll run this analysis past the other ladies at sewing this week. We probably will continue to put tops into the frame each month for tying as we have some women who prefer to tie rather than quilt, but this is the way to go, I think, when we want to make a lot of comforters quickly.

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I started working on the embroidered needle case pattern that I bought a few weeks ago. I attached the felt birdies with a glue stick and now I am whipstitching them to secure them to the piece of red wool.

Once that’s done, I can embellish them to make them look like fancy birdies. The woman who designed this pattern is giving a class on making it at the quilt store at the end of January. I kicked around the idea of taking the class, but it’s four full-day sessions and I just don’t think I can spare that much time.

I’ve also got the embroidered felt quilt block kit that Tera gave me, but that one is complicated enough that I want to perfect some of my embroidering skills before I start working on it.