Wednesday, February 9, 2011

On a Mission

Today I headed out early because I had two webinars to get back home for this afternoon.  My mission:  find fabric to use for a project for Saturday's Mystery Quilt Day.  I'm not doing the actual mystery quilt -- you can work on it or any other project you choose.  I'm getting a head start on a baby quilt for the bun in the oven, otherwise known as my future grandchild.

I got to the quilt shop only to find the door still locked.  It was darn nippy still at 10:05 AM.  The shop was to open at 10 AM.  I knocked.  I knocked again.  Darn if the woman I like the least opened up the door.  Nevermind her, I thought, I'm on a mission.  Like a little elf I got to work picking out just the right fabrics.  I had chosen a design from Judy Laquidara's 'Weekend Quilts' book, mostly because she said it could be finished in 6 hours, once you had cut the pieces.  I'm holding her to it, too!

I started by searching for the binding fabric, which is odd I know, but follow along, I promise it will work.  Here's the fabric I selected:

From there I pulled six fabrics to go with the binding fabric:

Then I needed to get nearly three yards of background.  Originally I was going to go with a plain white but then I saw this:

Most people who know me, know I stick to a plain ol' background, usually, but not today.  Today I stepped outside my comfort box and selected this fabric, which was from the Dr. Seuss line (it's actually really white, not creamy - naughty camera).  The only thing left to choose was the backing.  I saw a great green fabric that had the word 'ribbit' all over the place and that would have been great for my frog loving daughter but there wasn't enough.  I looked and looked, settling on two different fabrics.  One was cutesy animals, which I discarded, and the other was one a little more grown up.  I didn't press it yet but I'll show you once I do.

This brings me to a question.  When you buy fabric for a quilt, do you pre-wash or not?  I think I'm in the minority in that I always pre-wash.  It's the only time I actually ENJOY ironing.  I know most of my Chicken friends do NOT pre-wash.  It seems like professional quilters are divided on this topic too.  Let me know whether or not you're a pre-washer in today's comments!

2 comments:

  1. Nope. I like to let it shrink up when I first wash the quilt so that it looks all wrinkly and old when I have a new quilt on my bed. . .sort of like "finishing" my knitting, my quilts never seem done until I've washed them once. And I dry them in the dryer. I know that can cause issues, but I love to see them shrink and pucker. . .the heat helps them out.

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  2. No. I've had workshops with some great quilters who didn't pre-wash, had lots of reasons & statistics for it, although some of them test the fabrics prior to using. Besides--of all the fabrics in my stash, maybe in my lifetime I'll use 20% of them, so why waste my time? 2nd big reason is as above--I like ALL of my finished quilt to shrink a little to give them that 'antique' look.

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