Guy's Plaid Folksy Quilt

Tuesday Archives at Val's Quilting Studio motivated me to finish a draft of a post I began before Christmas. I hope you will find some tips, tricks or different methods of finishing a quilt as you read my blog post. 

I am sure every quilter has been asked to help someone out with a quilt project.
My sister asked me to help with finishing the quilt she had started for her son. 

How can one say no to a sister?

This is a photo of the finished quilt. 

She purchased plaid and plain wool suiting pieces. 

When I got the top, she had the pinwheels sewn. 

Below, you will find what I did to finish the quilt. 

My sister has not made many square patch quilts and wasn't sure of the quilting process. She did not have much of each fabric and had already cut them into squares. I suggested she cut them diagonally to create more visual appeal. I never thought to suggest fusible interfacing for stabilization, so there was S-T-R-E-T-C-H.

After sewing the pinwheels together she asked for help with sandwiching and binding. She had purchased a felted wool for the backing. We thought including batting in the quilt would be much too hot. I suggested it be sewn as a self-binding blanket. (You can see Jenny Doan's demonstration HERE.) I thought large hand sewn quilting stitches to hold the layers from shifting would be cool. So, I took the project home and went at it.

I stabilized the stretch on the outside edges and seams of the quilt with fusible woven interfacing.

I topstitched 1/4" on each side of the seams.  That helped stabilize the triangles. But, as you can see, the centers were off or puffy. I wanted to do something about those intersections. 

I thought a square would look nice and cover each of the intersections,

 as shown in the next photo. 

To do that, I sewed one square of the backing fabric and one of a cotton fabric, RST, around all edges. The under fabric would not be seen when appliqued down. I clipped the corners so the points would form nicely when turned right sides out. I clipped an X in the center of the under fabric only, in order to turn the pieces.

I used the chopstick to turn and poke out the corners of the squares and pressed the edges and corners with a bit of steam.

The cut would be hidden so I did not need to close it up.

I pinned the squares on the center seams of the pinwheels and topstitched in place. 

With the squares all sewn down, I measured the quilt top, figured how much backing was available to form the binding on the front. I decided to use all the backing I could, so the binding dimensions were not equal. (But the process of sewing it wasn't much different than if all the binding edges were equal.)

I had to fold the corners a little differently since a 45 degree angle would not work.

 I pinned, marked and topstitched (by hand) with embroidery needle 

and thick pearl cotton embroidery thread as shown below. 

Here is the back. 

Although there were still a few loose areas, the quilt is a lap quilt, very warm -- with temperature and LOVE. I was happy to have helped my sister. She was very pleased with how it looked and my 29-year-old nephew really LIKED it.

Leave a comment and let me and my readers know how you have helped someone out with a quilting project or quilting predicament.