Once you have your fabric all ironed, you have to cut it into strips. Mom uses a technique called "Strip piecing," where she cuts long strips, then sews them together, then cuts them apart and then sews them together to make "blocks" or what Mom calls "chunks." She doesn't cut individual squares.
Everything has to be ironed first, and then the fabric has to be "straightened out" (I dunno what this means, but Mom says the sewers among you will know) and the ragged edge cut away. This takes time.
To cut the strips Mom has a special cutting board, plexiglas strips and she uses a rotary cutter with a really sharp blade. It looks like a pizza cutter. (What's a pizza?)
She cuts strips from each different piece of fabric she has. For the kitty quilts Mom has been cutting strips of two widths: 2-1/2" and 4-1/2". Mom can spend a whole evening in the sewing room just cutting.
(you can click the pictures to biggify)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q & A
Annie visited eQuilter and asked Mom what a "Fat Quarter" is.Fabric is sold by the yard. Cotton fabric is usually about 42" to 45" wide (and there are about 25 yards on a bolt). The smallest amount of fabric you can buy is usually a quarter of a yard (9"), so a quarter yard piece would be a piece 9" by about 45" wide. But 9" isn't very large, so quilt shops often cut half-yard (18") strips, then cut it crosswise into two pieces. Same amount of fabric, but instead of having a 9" x 45" piece, you'd have a piece 18" x 22-1/2." Each piece is called a "fat quarter."
5 comments:
Very cool! Making a quilt certainly is a lot of work! That is really neat how your mom sews the fabric into "chunks" to quilt with. My mom says all the special cutting stuff looks very handy to have.
I can't wait to get a quilt! :) They look so beautiful and warm and I love being warm. :) It's great that your mom is looking into shipping overseas. I'll wait for mine if I have to, but having it sooner would be nice, of course. :)
I am SOOOOOOOO excited to get my quilt! Made by yer Mommie!!!!
Wow your mum is SO clever to be able to create those beautiful quilts. I wish my human slave could do that but she is inept at anything creative. She does admire people as talented as your human.
Ummm......too much math.
But nice end product!
uh-oh. we just red on Skeezix's blog 'bout the $4.50 fur shippin' an we furgetted all 'bout the shippin' when we sended the check an so maybe then we gotta send anofur check...how much fur shippin' 'em all ta CA?
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