Welcome to week 5 of the Merry Mini QAL! It's the final days of this Christmas in July party! I managed to get caught up last Monday afternoon, stitching my tree rows together and then adding them to my three quilt tops. Then they all just sat until Friday afternoon, when I finally got them all basted. It took less than an hour to baste them all, so why did I keep putting it off???
Saturday morning I started the quilting. I quilted diagonal lines in all the red squares on all three, then lines in all the tree trunks, then more diagonal lines in the green squares and wishbones in the trees.
Though I had thought about quilting the three quilts differently, once I got started I just wanted to keep doing the same thing for all of them. Sometimes it's better to have fewer decisions to make, lol.
For the background, I chose a small loopy meander. Usually I say this design reminds me of eyelet lace, but in this context it makes me think of strands of Christmas lights. The background of each Merry Mini took about 30 minutes to quilt.
As always, the quilting looks so pretty on the back, too.
Over the course of the day, I quilted all the colours for all three minis and the backgrounds of two of them. It definitely didn't take all day, I think I spent about an hour in the morning, another hour or so in the afternoon, and another hour in the evening. Then I finished the third background on Sunday afternoon.
Week 5 - Binding
If you haven't already joined the QAL, there's still a few days to join in for some Christmas in July fun! You can pick up your pattern here. Until the end of July, the Merry Mini pattern is 20% off with the code MERRYMINIQAL, which should already by applied if you click on the link. Once you have your pattern, enter your email address here to have the weekly emails sent to your inbox so you don't miss any of the QAL blog posts.
As a reminder, here's the weekly schedule. Click on the links to go to the previous posts.
July 1 - Make the text block
July 8 - Make the alternating squares borders
July 15 - Make the tree borders
July 22 - Quilting
July 29 - Binding
The next step after finishing the quilting is to trim off the excess batting and backing. I always love how that simple step transforms the look of a quilt! It looks so much more finished when the edges are clean, even though they're still raw edges.
Some quilters get very particular about making sure their quilts are perfectly square. I'm not one of them. I use my long ruler and my rotary cutter to make sure each side is straight, but I don't fuss about getting perfect 90° angles.
Once the quilt is trimmed, I add my label to the bottom right corner on the back. I got these labels from Finer Ribbon (they've since gone out of business) and there were 1,000 on the roll at the start, so I don't think I'll ever run out.
Hanging the mini quilt
Since this is a mini quilt, we need to think about how it will be displayed. It's likely to be hung on a wall, so how do we want to do that? We could sew a sleeve to put on the back or add triangles to the corners. With either of those options, you use a dowel and nails or hooks on the wall. For the past couple of years, though, I've been using Command strips for small quilts. I started out with the strips designed for hanging posters, but when I ran out of those I started using strips sold as refills for the hooks. This most recent pack that Paul picked up are meant for outdoor use, but they work fine in the house, too.
I attach the strip directly to the back of the quilt in the top corners, then stick them to the wall. After Christmas, follow the instructions to remove the strip from the wall, then just peel it off the quilt. There's no damage to either the wall or the quilt, and no residue left behind.
I've had quilts hanging on my laundry room wall for years using Command strips. A few months ago one of them fell down because the strips weren't sticky enough to hold it anymore, and even after years stuck to the quilt, there was still no residue left behind. I stuck new strips on and hung it back up 😊
Binding
Once upon a time, I was certain that the only correct way to bind a quilt was to sew the binding to the front by machine, then hand stitch it to the back. Anything else was just wrong. Then came a day when I was making something for gifts and didn't have time to hand stitch the binding. This was pre-blog days, so I can't remember for sure, but I think it was a set of minis. Whatever it was, I decided to try machine binding and I was amazed at how quick it was and even more surprised that it didn't look horrible! Not that I did a great job, but that the look of binding finished by machine wasn't the abomination I thought it would be. I quickly made the switch to machine binding all my quilts, and I'm so glad I got out of my 'only one right way' mindset!
Over the years I picked up tips and refined my method, then in 2016 I published a tutorial for how to bind a quilt by machine. I still bind my quilts the exact same way! If you're not yet happy with the results when you bind your quilts by machine, check out the tutorial to see if there's something I do differently that might make a difference for you.
This is one of last year's Merry Minis |
Finishing the binding by machine stitching it to the front of the quilt is pretty much the only time I don't always match the bobbin thread to the top thread. I match the top thread to the binding fabric and match the bobbin thread to either the backing fabric or the thread I used for quilting. I want that line of stitching to be as unnoticeable as possible on the back, so I choose whichever one will blend in the most. In the case of the Merry Mini above, you can see I chose a red thread, to match the backing. Of course, the binding is red, too, so for that quilt the top and bobbin threads did match.
My three QAL Merry Minis are sitting and waiting, with their labels clipped on, ready for their bindings. I'm hoping to get them all finished before the calendar flips over to August.
Thanks for joining me for the Merry Mini QAL! I hope you've had as much fun stitching your Merry Mini quilt as I have 😊
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