Pattern Matching for Seamless Seams {Tutorial}

Today I wanted to take a quick detour and do a more in depth tutorial about pattern matching larger scale prints for nearly invisible (or at the very least, less visible) seams for backings.

For some fabrics -- smaller scale prints, solids -- pattern matching is kind of unnecessary. But sometimes, with directional fabrics or some styles of large scale prints, just sewing two pieces of fabric together results in a very obvious seam location. Some people won't be bothered by this, but some people are and I am definitely one of those people.

An important note: different kinds of prints require different thought processes about how to match the print repeats and where to place the sewing line.

Here's a seam match from my Farmer's Wife quilt backing, which my mom actually sewed together for me:

Can you find the seam? It's between the white and pink stripes in the middle of this photo. For this print, the points of the zig zags were used to line up the print and the seam runs along the tip of the pink points and intersects with the tip of the white points.

Here's the backing of my Fire Pit quilt that I made this spring for the Stash Statement blog hop:

For this print, the seam is within the red stripe running across the picture from left to right. I aligned the fabric using the red stripes running up and down through the fabric and placed my seam line in the middle of the red edge stripes running left to right.

Today, I'm going to show an in depth example of how I match patterns. I'll be working on piecing a backing using this fabric (which I got from the clearance section at the Fat Quarter Shop online from a Downton Abbey fabric line) which is directional.

To get the tassels to hang all in the same direction, I'll need to sew together the two pieces of backing (approximately 2 yards each, 4 yards total) along the opposite salvage edges. (I also added the ruler for scale) If you fold your backing in half lengthwise and sew along the same side of the selvage, your tassels will hang in opposite directions.

Now I'm going to look long and hard at the print and think about two things -- where I want to place the seam line and what "landmarks" to use to align the fabric. If you're a spacial thinker, the seam line will run parallel to the salvage and the "landmarks" are the places in the print along the length of the fabric that you'll use to align your two pieces of fabric.

This photo is the same as the photo above with my projected seam lines (one dashed line on each piece of fabric) and my "landmarks" (marked with stars).

I am going to align the two pieces of fabric such that I pin at each of the tassels, which will be my landmarks. I am going to sew through the knots -- which ends up being about an inch from the fabric edge -- along the length of the fabric.

I don't like to trim my salvages prior to sewing the backing seam. I prefer to sew my seam and make sure that it's situated properly first and then to trim the salvage off. I also am totally okay with this seam being larger than 1/4" after I trim off the salvage since I will press this seam open (which I do for all of my backing seams).

And ta-da! I have a moderately well-matched seam that fades into the overall print of the fabric. The tassels along the seam are slightly more narrow, but the overall repeat of the print is not broken, which is the most important factor.

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you in your future pieced backing endeavors! As I noted, every print has to be considered differently, so this is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all type of technique. For example, this blue raindrop fabric is the next one I'll be working on putting together the pieced backing:

At a glance, I think I'll need to sew through the middle of the raindrops across from left to right. This one might end up being slightly more obvious given the detail of the little raindrops on the inside of the larger raindrop motif, but I think with a little extra love it will blend together.

Are you a pattern matcher or are you someone who avoids this kind of matching at all costs? Tell me about your pattern matching experiences in the comments!

30 Pearls {Quilt Top}

I'm excited to share my finished quilt top for our June Island Batik Ambassador project!

First and foremost, I love that my original vision worked out so well with these fabrics and was so simple to create! Even though I'm a nervous pinner for sewing curves, the blocks were quick and easy. 

The one change from my original design is that I pieced the top and bottom sashing (which makes the quilt square rather than rectangular) instead of it being single pieces. This was out of necessity (since I was working with fat eighths!) and I think it looks great.

Here's the top together:

And for comparison, here's the original design!

Since I didn't want to buy something as a separate backing for this quilt (since it's going to be a wall hanging), I pulled some of my 5" Island Batik stash builder strips, one of the fat eighths that I didn't use in the quilt top, and a larger piece of green yardage (some of which I had used in my Blocked Rainbow quilt).

The green piece of yardage wasn't quite big enough on its own for the backing, so I needed it to "grow" a little bit. I sewed the 5" strips end to end and then added four slice-and-insert strips to my green yardage, two going in each direction.

I like the added interest on the back, even if I'll be the only one that knows it's there! Now to work in earnest on quilting the top! I'm planning to use white thread in the "pearls" and colored thread in the background. I actually have about a dozen different pink, purple, red, and orange-hued spools of Aurifil that I've been auditioning! I've also been studying Leah Day's quilting gallery for quilting ideas.

Happy Friday and happy sewing! Sharing at Finished or not Friday and Linky Tuesday!

Churning It Out.

In a matter of less than 24 hours, I managed to get all of the blocks done for the quilt top for my churn dash baby quilt! And that includes trimming all of my HSTs. While that part took a lot more time, I think it was totally worth it because none of my HSTs ended up wonky (which was a huge problem in my Lazy Sunday Mystery quilt.)

Here's the top all put together:

I'm so happy with how this turned out!

For the back, I thought that I had enough of one fabric to complete the entire back, but I sadly did not. Instead, I took a walk on the wild side and made this for the backing:

Yes. That is a 42 inch churn dash, people. I used up the majority of what was left of all of these fabrics and the biggest churn dash that I could make and still have some of the tan dot print for outer borders was 42 inches finished. The outer strips are 5 inches wide -- so the backing is about 2 inches bigger than the top all the way around.

Here it is all layered and pinned -- ready to be quilted!

It's so liberating to not have to buy fabric to finish a project and to pull every bit of fabric used from my shelves! I did have to buy white thread to be able to free motion quilt this one on my own. Yes. I am going to FMQ this thing myself.

That's one of my quilting resolutions this year -- to learn to FMQ and to finish more of my own projects myself and to have 100% completed by me. I still have no problem having a long arm quilter doing my big projects or special projects, but things like baby quilts I can totally learn to handle on my own. Anyone with me on this??

Sharing at Linky Tuesday at Free Motion by the River!

Quilted Uncle Sam

This project has come together so fast!

Today I did all of the machine quilting for my Uncle Sam wall hanging. I ended up doing echo quilting around Sam and all of the stars and echo quilting inside the red zig-zag border and the blue banded border.

Here's the whole thing with the binding stitched on the front for me to hand stitch later tonight:

Here's a close up of the two inner borders:

Here's a picture of the back on one of the corners:

Here's the backing (yay for pieced backings and using stuff from your stash!) with the hanging sleeve sewed on.

Thanks for all the input, ladies!

(Also, this is a little ways off, but I'll be looking for a few guest posters between October 10th-October 20th while I'm off getting married and honeymooning. So think on it for a while and I'll put a "formal" call out in a few weeks!)

NuBees Quilt Top

While my mom was here two weeks ago, we drug out and looked at a bunch of my projects and she helped me lay out all of my blocks from my NuBees swap that I did over the summer and fall.

I finished sewing the blocks in rows while she was here and finished sewing the rows together last night.

Here is the top all sewn together:

The blocks are all 12.5" blocks and the sashings are 2.5" strips cut from a huge chunk of Zipang fabric that I got on sale a year ago at Christmastime that was the inspiration for these blocks.

I decided to also do a pieced back for this one out of the rest of the sashing fabric and a number of other small cuts of fabric in my stash. This pieced back is much simpler than the one I made previously, but it's such a good feeling to not have to purchase additional fabric to finish this one!

If you can't tell the back is NOT squared up right now. I didn't figure it made a difference until after it was quilted, anyways.

Also, I'm all set up for anyone to follow me on BlogLovin' now! There's a button on the sidebar and if you're still in Google Reader, apparently its really easy to transfer from one to the other. I always just use Blogger so I'm not super affected by the demise of Google Reader.

Have a Hoppy Easter weekend all!

Tying up loose ends

Sunday was a rather productive sewing day. My sewing consultants (my mom and sister) gave lots of advice and helpful guidance in finishing the pieced back for my Twist of Lime quilt. It didn't end up quite big enough for the full backing, so it'll need a little bit of fabric all the way around.

I also finished up my Shoe Quilt top! It went together so fast!

I'm going to try to machine this myself with the free motion quilting foot I got for my birthday!

I also sewed the binding onto the snowflake quilt:

Just the hand stitching to go on this one!

Birthday Weekend

Thursday night, I worked on my fancy pieced back. It is kind of wild in comparison to what I usually do, but I am excited to get out of my box a little bit (but not too much!). This is what I have so far:

Today I'm going to try to finish up a little bit more of it as I still have a rather large pile of black and green fabrics.

Friday was my birthday and my mom and sister came in for the weekend to visit! They stopped at a bunch of quilt stores on the way here and brought me some goodies:

The yardage is from the Blank Quilting Dragon Magic Collection and yes, that is a jelly roll of BLITZEN BY BASIC GREY. I have been lusting after some of this fabric since I first saw it a month or two ago online.

We've basically just been hanging out and eating and kibitzing since they got into town Friday afternoon and its been wonderful. They brought me two quilted quilts to put bindings on and I'll show those off later this week. Hope your weekends have been wonderful!

Twist of Lime

Last night, I finished up the borders on my green, black, and white quilt, that shall henceforth be known as "Twist of Lime".

I have it hung up sideways from previous pictures, and there may or may not be packing tape involved in this display.

The black borders are a small polka dot pattern and the green border is one of the fabrics used in the quilt.

Now I'm working on getting things together for my first artsy pieced back made from the leftover fabric. Here's what I have so far:

In other news, I finally signed up for my first block swap bee! I joined the NuBees Swap and I am so excited! If you haven't been keeping up on it, please check out the recent and upcoming bloggers in the Let's Get Aquainted blog hop!