Mar 14, 2008

Quilting supplies, borders

I purchased a new quilter's marking pencil the other day. I thought that I might need it for marking lines on my quilt where I'm embroidering antennae on my butterflies. I'm just freehand marking the the lines. In the book, Jan Mullen quilted them on in a dark color. But I decided to hand embroider them. However, I couldn't see the pencil marks very well. I tested out a couple of my other markers, and they were not very satisfactory. So I'm back to my usual method--I just use a stub of blackboard chalk. I purchased a small battery-operated lamp, and that helps, too. If I were making an ambitious embroidered picture, that required a lot of detail, I wouldn't use the chalk. I have a light table. My light table was a discarded toy that I bought at a yard sale many, many years ago. The box has a picture of Mickey Mouse on it. It was intended for children to use for tracing. A toy like that would never be sold now-a-days. It would be considered hazardous or something, or be recalled, or I don't know what. But what a great buy for me, especially when they were not making light tables for crafts back then.
I sewed on a border on the butterfly quilt yesterday. And I found some flannel on sale that is a blue background and butterflies--what luck. Flannel can shrink a lot, so I wash it before I put it on the back of my quilts. It's in the dryer right now. And they had another flannel with tea cups and tea pots on it, which will be so cute on the teacup quilt. I measured the teacup quilt for borders yesterday, and I have a good piece of yellow gingham in my stash to use on the border. I might applique something on there, I don't know yet. I love to improvise as I go along. I usually use a pieced scrap border on quilts, so I can still change my mind on the teacups yet--

1 comment:

jovaliquilts said...

Isn't it great when you find the perfect backing fabric? I know some people don't much care about the backings, but I do.