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:
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.
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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