4. LLoni's version of Yellow Brick Road, page 2
But eventually I come back to make my "sandwich". I picked out a fabric to use as backing, and used the same fabric for the wide border needed to make the extra width for a day bed cover.
The border at top and bottom is nine inches finished, but the border on the sides is fourteen inches to allow enough "tuck" behind the mattress on the back, and still hang down to the floor on the front.
My daybed sits at the highest setting to allow a trundle bed to fit underneath. I don't have the trundle bed, but I use the space for storage and wanted the quilt hang low enough to hide my storage boxes.
Finally it was time to make the "sandwich"!
Because the finished piece was wider than the backing fabric, Sue helped me build the size needed by cutting three panels across the grain and joining them to create the proper length. After the seams were pressed, we centered the backing, right side down, on the work table.
Next came the batting. I had purchased Pellon Fleese Batting because it gives a firm shape while still offering some "puff" ability.
When the batting was in place, we centered the pieced top into position, and began "basting" the sandwich together with large safety pins. It took a lot of pins to place them nearly end-to-end on both sides of what would be my "quilting" lines.
I intended from the beginning to "quilt" the blanket using a "Stitch In The Ditch" method.
This meant I would sew through the sandwich thickness by following the seams that held the patches together.
Safety pins were placed far enough apart to allow the sewing machine to feed between the rows, but close enough together in each row to prevent buckling and slippage.
Four packages of safety pins and some tender fingertips later It sounded wonderfully easy in theory. But as with everything else I'm learning, theory put into practice can be more difficult than expected. Fortunately I'm the type that enjoys learning as I go. What was difficult, was just another challenge to learn something new.
"Start sewing from the middle," she said. "And sew all the lengthwise passes first, then do the crosswise lines."
That made perfect sense! So I measured the blanket from upper left corner to lower right (lengthwise), and then from upper right to lower left, and determined the "X" marked the center.
Don't laugh, I somehow managed to be off by more than two inches to the right. But who was going to know the difference?
In order to hang onto the thing with some measure of control, and feed half of the width through the "throat" of my home sewing machine, Sue helped me "roll" the two sides toward the middle and snap on circular clamps to help hold the rolls in place.
Help! My twelve pound bulky "sandwich" of backing, batting, pieced top, nine-jillion safety pins, and 6 light metal clamps was not an easy thing to carry intact to the sewing machine.
Nor was it easy to feed the first half of the bulk under the machine's presser foot before setting it down to start sewing "FROM THE MIDDLE!"
It was a little like hanging onto wet spaghetti with a two-tined fork!
The thing WANTED to slip down-and-sideways from its own weight, and when I wasn't careful, the "drag" on the needle caused its own problems.
The whole process jammed once and came to a dead stop about three quarters of the way toward the outside edge. The presser foot couldn't drag it through, and I couldn't push it through either.
The far side of the thing had run into the wall behind the sewing table and wouldn't budge another inch.
One quick turn of the mass sitting on the back side cleared a few inches of space. From that point on, I had to stop every few inches to turn more of the roll away from the wall. When the first half was done, the whole thing had to be turned around and re-positioned to start back at the middle, and sew to the opposite side.
HooRay! One Row Completed!.
It took the rest of the day to work my way back and forth to complete each of the "North-South" seams. It took nearly a day and a half to complete all of the "East-West" seams because there were more of them, and also because there was more fabric to jam through the small throat on my machine to reach the "middle" rows.
But I finally got it done. What a RUSH to turn it over and look at my lovely squares from the back! Even on close inspections I was able to prove I had not skipped any ditch lines.
Now all that was left was the binding!
