The quilt that was not meant to be

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Funny title, don't you think?

My mother wanted a tablerunner. We went to a quiltshop and she chose three fabrics, 2 batics and a green.
But when I was back home she called and told me she'd rather have the fabric I used for her cushions. You can see the result here.

Hm. What to do with the three fabrics? I could use the green one for the leaves, at least some of it. I have no idea what to do with one of the batics - it's not my favourite colour. My mother is all into browns and warm oranges and beige - I can't stand those.
But the third one! I just love it!! It's a totally crazy batic, you can't even tell which colour is the main colour. But the overall impression is beautiful!

It's so beautiful that I instantly started to plan a quilt for me. The only problem: I have only 50 cm. It was the last scrap the shop had in stock. And I don't want to cut this piece into many very small pieces. I want to keep the fabric as big as possible.

Phew. What can I do?
First I went into MY quiltshop and bought two more fabrics, a pale blue and a light creme batic. I have a lot of dark reds in my stash..
I searched for patterns and chose Birds-in-the-Air. There is always a huge HST of one fabric!

I used EQ7 for the layout and pushed the blocks around until I had a layout that used as much as possible of the main batic. (After cutting and sewing all that was left was two strips 1,0 x 5,0 - not bad!)

That's how the quilt looked after quilting. I couldn't quilt swirls or something like that, the quilt is way too geometric. And a thread with colour was also a no-go - nothing should distract the eye of the batic. Ok, straightline-quilting with monofilament.
I took two photos of the top - you can see the quilt-lines on the the second photo with the flash. Click on the photos to enlarge them and admire the batic :-)


The next step was the binding. I would've loved to use the dark batic - but it was all sewed up. Ok, let's use the light batic. (light blue looked boring and the red was almost finished).
But the creme batic looked a little bit boring too. Hm. I remembered something I had seen somewhere - I don't know where and I had no idea how to make it.

There are tutorials in the internet how to make a flange - but I didn't want to do that. I would lose the points of the triangles in the border that way.

I created something different. I did severeal test-runs until I had the measurements.

Here follows the Tutorial for Ninas flange!! (I have to pin it to pinterest, I'm sure it will go viral!)

I cut the binding-strip to the usual width (in this case - very thin polyester-batting - 1,75 inch).
Then I cut a strip in a contrasting colour in 0,75 inch (seamallowance x 2  plus 0,25 inch).


I folded this red strip wrong side to wrong side and basted it to the quilt (like I do with a 'normal' binding).


On top of that I pinned the normal binding.


That's the quilted sandwich with all its layers. The second photo shows the corner during pinning.


This quilt will end up as a wallhanging (I have no use for tablerunners), so it got sleeves.


On the first photo you can see the binding on the top, on the second the binding turned over and pinned.
You can see already how beautiful the Nina-flange will turn out!
Only - the mitered corner is not quite mitered. The red fabric does not behave as I expected.


The finished binding:  the Nina-flange is great - the corner is not. And as you see, I lost the points of the triangles in the border anyway.

What would I change the next time?
- don't sew a border with triangles that end in the Nina-flange-binding. Or add another narrow triangle-less border.
- iron the red stripe in half like I do with the normal binding (I folded the red one, but did not press)
- corners: cut the thread and sew first the red strip alone with the machine around the corner
- second step: sew the normal binding with the machine around the corner
I'm not yet sure if I should sew the red strip by hand on the back of the quilt before I sew the regular binding with machine on the top.
When I did a testrun, I'll post an update.


done!
We took two photos, one in the sun and one in the shadow. There is a lot more texture in one of them, click on the photo to enlarge it!

Comments (2)

  • Mari
    Mari
    at 20.12.2019
    Your little quilt turned out lovely! I love the geometrics and how you used the colors. The corners may not be perfect but the Nina flange worked out great!
  • The Joyful Quilter
    The Joyful Quilter
    at 20.12.2019
    Congrats! on your newly completed quilt.

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