South Africa
Sewing ideas
PATCHWORK QUILTED PICNIC BLANKET
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The project
The sewing instructions
Materials:
- 1.5 metres of quilting material, 150 cm wide
- 50 cm of green fabric
- 50 cm of white fabric
- 50 cm of printed fabric
- 1 metre of red fabric
- 1.6 metres of sturdy fabric for backing (heavy cotton or denim)
- 6.5 metres of bias binding 2-3 cm wide (cotton or satin)
- Thread, ruler, pencil, scissors, pins
Instructions:
1- Patchwork squares and borders:
- Begin by cutting out the patchwork squares for your blanket
- 8 white squares
- 9 green squares
- 9 red squares
- 10 printed squares
If you have an embroidery machine, you can also embroider several of these squares for added effect:
- Gather all the squares in front of you, and arrange them in a pleasing, harmonious pattern.
- Sew the squares together to form long strips.
- When all squares have been sewn into strips, pin the strips together to form a single large square. Be sure to pin each individual patchwork square to its neighbour to ensure the strips remain correctly aligned.
- Iron all seams down flat.
- To make the borders, cut two strips of red fabric 11cm wide. The length of these strips should match the dimensions of your assembled patchwork squares.
- Sew a strip to each side of the patchwork to form the left- and right-hand borders.
- Iron both seams down flat in the direction of the borde.
- For the upper and lower borders, cut two more strips of red fabric 11cm wide, but 20cm longer than the left- and right-hand borders.
- Sew these strips to the top and bottom of the blanket, and iron seams down flat in the direction of the border.
2- Quilting material and backing:
- Iron your backing fabric (cotton or denim).
- Lay the quilting material flat on top the backing.
- Place the patchwork cover on top, and align with the quilting and backing fabric.
- Carefully pin and tack the three layers together.
3- Sewing your quilt:
- Overstitch all seams.
- Use a bobbin with transparent thread above and cotton thread below (thread colour should match the colour of the backing fabric).
Helpful hints- If your machine comes with an integrated adjustable feed (IAF), use it - it will help you move more quickly, and the resulting stitching will be of even higher quality..
- If your machine is a simpler model, using the open toe walking foot will also deliver excellent results.
- If you wish to sew your quilt in hands-free mode, take advantage of the special embroidery/darning foot.
- When you've finished overstitching the entire quilt, remove all tacking stitches.
- Cut away the excess quilting and backing fabric, to ensure all edges are neat.
4- Sewing the bias edging:
- Open out the bias binding and pin it along the edges of the quilt (edge to edge, right side up against right side up). Sew the bias binding onto the quilt, using the fold in the binding as a guide.
- When you've sewn your binding all the way around the upper side of your quilt, tuck the bias binding around the underside of the quilt. To finish, either:
- Sew down the binding by hand, using invisible stitches, or
- Overlock the bias binding by machine, using either straight or zigzag stitching, or Overlock with a cover hem.
