Ballerina Quilt Day 2

Welcome back!! We are now on day 2 of the ballerina quilt instructions. Last time, I cut the quilt top, backing, and ruffle; sewed the ruffle to the quilt top, then sewed the quilt top to the backing, turned it right side out to make sure I liked the look, cut the batting to fit, and turned the quilt right side out again and sewed the turning hole closed. After choosing a drawing of toe shoes tied together with a bow from the Internet, I printed the picture and had Staples enlarge the picture 3x the size. Then, the fun began!!! Here's how it looked:

I purchased a water soluble marking pen from Joann's Fabrics to mark my fabric with. I know the directions say to test first, and of course I didn't. However, the ink does come out after multiple applications of water. Next time, I will use a fine point rather than a regular point. Once I had the design perfectly positioned on the quilt top, I perforated the paper pattern with my long handled tweezers used to grab the thread on my serger. Here's me, poking the holes:

And the finished product looks like this.

  The tip of the marking pen fits perfectly in the holes and transfers the design perfectly and easily onto the fabric.

Here's a picture of the marked fabric. The blue marks are my guidelines for hand quilting the design, though it could be machine quilted. I prefer to hand quilt on a design that serves as the focal point, making my stitches as even as I can and using a contrasting thread. I did think about using embroidery cotton, but was afraid I wouldn't be able to pull the knots through on the back side as easily. In the past, I have hand quilted with polyester serger thread, but I only had one cone of very light pink thread. I opted to purchase (with a coupon from Joann's) a spool of hand quilting cotton since it is pre-treated and doesn't knot up when you are sewing. Of course, bee's wax prevents that, too, but my bee's wax has run away with my applique scissors--I can't find either of them anywhere.

 Polyester fabric has a tendency to snag very easily. Thus, I had to hold my quilt "sandwich" (backing, batting, and quilt top) together with fine straight pins. I stitched along with a fairly small needle and a single thread. With the blue dots still in place, the quilting doesn't look very pretty. I did consider sewing with a double thread, but again, the knots have to pull through the backing and bury themselves into the batting. I thought a single thread since the color was distinct would work.

Here's a picture of the quilting with and without the marking lines. When the fabric is still damp, the blue is completely invisible. Once dry, the blue lightly re-appears. I dampened the quilt a dozen or more times to get all the faint blue completely removed. I could have immersed the quilt in water, but I had all day to wet, dry, wet, dry, wet, and dry. Next time, I'll just immerse in clean water. The directions do warn against washing since some of the soap components can set the dye and leave permanent mark on the finished product.







Here's my hand quilted quilt top. I think it's very nice. If you look closely, you'll see on the left upper corner I missed the second side of the ribbon. I did catch that mistake and added it in before moving on with the machine quilting.

OK, tomorrow we pick up the final steps in finishing the ballerina quilt. Hope I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and try something new that looks fabulous and is super easy.