Quilting advice/questions

I’ve got a blanket I want to use as a quilt back. I have a mattress pad that I’m using as the “batting.”
I have a bunch of random scraps of fleece that I’d like to create a random, kinda fluid “quilt” to put on the other side of this blanket.
I’ve only ever done quilts with squares (and astrud’s strip quilt).
I’d like to stitch the pieces together to echo the starry night swirls, though much bigger and simpler.
Ideas on how to make that happen? I was thinking of cutting my shape out and laying it on top of another piece and stitching it down (so I’m not trying to join two curved edges.)
Or maybe using a sheet and sewing my cut out pieces to it?

I laid it out and pinned the crap out of it. Then i started in the middle and did (slightly wavy) spokes with my sewing maxing out to each corner. I’m thinking about hand sewing the blanket onto the mattress pad because I’m not particularly happy with the lines crossing the picture. It’s stabilized for now, so I should be able to hand wheel out from here (maybe)
Any tips for the best kind of needle to use?
I have tons of stuff from two grandmothers, so I might just own that specialty needle.

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I’m also thinking of cutting out the pieces and sewing them to a sheet or another piece of fleece… Then spot tacking the big front and back together.

Opinions from those who do such things?

Sooooo. Are you making a “front”? Or is this really what you want to be your front?

One of the keys to quilting on a home machine - be it free motion or turning the quilt round and round underneath - is to have it well-basted.

Spray-glue basted is probably easiest, but you’ll be wearing glue, and the parts with glue on them will want to stick to themselves. There are likely youtube videos to see how to do this. I personally prefer 505 spray, but there are several options available at craft stores and in quilt stores. One thing to be prepared for: have alcohol and cotton balls or swabs available, because your sewing machine needle WILL get dunked up and need cleaning on a fairly regular basis. And, the glue does not necessarily dissolve with regular machine washing. I made a wearable art piece in the mid-1990’s and used spray glue to layer sparkle lame pieces between silk organza. I washed it, and it turned into a wad of rubber cement. Having it dry-cleaned removed the goo, but it made me a bit more choosy about situations when I use it in a quilt.

You can also hand-stitch baste in a grid pattern across the whole quilt (BIG basting stitches; like half-inch to one-inch) and cut away the basting as you complete quilting a section.

Or there is pin-basting. On a very small quilt (placemat sized) you can get away with straight pins, but on something this size, you’ll get stabbed a LOT. So get yourself a MESS of safety pins. The ones that are about an inch long are the best size in my opinion. Bigger usually has fatter metal (leaving bigger holes) and the dinky brass ones aren’t big enough to get through all three layers of quilt.

What kind of material is the mattress pad made of? (polyester? cotton?) if poly, is it all encased between two layers of fabric-ish stuff already? The reason I ask is that while polyester batting is great for hand-quilting, it’s hard to find poly batting that is thin enough to not behave like ball bearings while you quilt. By that I mean that the top portion of the batting may move with your top while the bottom goes another direction. Which makes for a rather nasty puckered surface. Cotton or cotton blends are a LOT easier to work with minimal cussing involved.

All that said, rather than machine stitching, you might consider what is called “big stitch” and quilt it by hand. having a big hoop will make it easier, but it’s not necessarily required if you have pretty stable quilting done. Stitches are usually around a quarter inch long, and the thread used is heavier. A light-weight pearle cotton, for example. It is usually available in the embroidery thread area of your local hobby store. (but color options may be limited.) You could use thread colors to play up Van Gogh’s swirls.

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Or you can buy a spool of YLI Wash-A-Way thread, which dissolves in the washing machine. Use it as the bobbin thread; machine baste the living daylights out of it, and then wash when it’s completely finished and the top thread will just pull right off.

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And now I know why I can’t escape the desire to cut tons of little flame/mustache/banana slugs out of fleece.


It’s your fault! :rofl:

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Thank you for the advise.
I think I’m assembling the back, but I’ll likely be using it as I sit on the couch, so I need to like both sides.
I’ve already started over 3 times placing things. Now I’m in slug cutting mode.
[version 2 of 3]

No adhesive, I guess. I’m not willing to gunk up my grandmother’s 70yr old singer.

If you were going to pin baste the slugs onto the blue fleece backing, any tricks? I feel like I’m going to pin it, hand stitch it, and then sew the crap out of it on my sewing machine.

The front is pinned every 9-12 inches in every direction. Is that enough or would you do more?

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And the lining/batting/mattress pad is weird but I think pinned enough to stay together.

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Looking at your various pieces … has everything already been washed once? I’m thinking about different shrinkage rates during the first washing.

Oh, lord. I didn’t even think about them not being washed. All the little pieces of fleece probably haven’t been.

Thanks!

Well … let’s think about this. @jrkriehn - please chime in.

What is the fabric content of the starry night piece? If it’s 100% cotton it could shrink about 3% the first time it gets washed. Your fleece is most probably polyester so it will probably shrink very little - so prewashing that probably isn’t necessary. Your mattress pad isn’t going to shrink.

The difference between the cotton and the mattress pad is going to cause some puckering … however - some people really like that because it can make the quilting look a little puffier. However, it could also twist. It’s my experience that cotton fabric tends to skew a little when it shrinks the first time.

If the starry night piece is 100% cotton (which IMO is the most likely), I would pre-wash it (cold, with 1/2 cup of white vinegar) and then dry it on hot (with a towel in the dryer so it tumbles better). I wouldn’t do anything to the fleece or the mattress pad.

Just my opinion.

These flames are about to get a LOT bigger. Yeesh

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My biggest concern is the mattress pad for batting. But then the whole project is kinda “using what’s handy”. So who am I to judge.

My assumption was that the starry-night was a fleece blanket.

The blanket is kinda fleecey and a little pill-y. It was in a donation pile and I thought it’d make a cute quilt. :blush:

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Then… You may not really need to use batting at all. Just have the front you are putting together and the back. A lot of people back quilts with minky or fleece when they’re just for cuddling.

corrected spelling of minky. damn that autocorrect.

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