WARNING: everything in this post has to do with a quilting design problem I’m facing. If you want to help me solve my design problem, or just look at some pretty photos of a current project, read on.
Okay, so I’m in a bit of a bind. I had a calendar with a picture of a lovely batik quilt. Then I decided to make one of my own. However, since I wasn’t feeling up to hand-dyeing my cottons, and the commercially available ones in no way correspond to the colours used in the original, I had to improvise.
I then came up with a fun, original quilting idea, using multicoloured blue and green and white threads for the water areas, and red-orange-gold thread for the flame panels.
Now, my problem is size. The usual crib quilt dimensions are 36×45″, which makes a nice, tidy rectangle. At the moment, each of the stripey blue-green and red bars are 8″ wide by 23″ high, which makes for complications when borders are added. Assuming a matching 8″ border of solid turqoise with red corners, the finished dimensions would be 56″ wide by 39″ high. Not exactly a perfect rectangle. Or, for that matter, a standard size of any kind — too big for a crib, too small for a lap quilt.
So, I can either run with this, add the borders and call it a “wall quilt” (although I would really like it to be a useable work of art; for me, that’s the whole joy of quilting, is that it’s functional).
Or, I can GET SCRUNCHY!!! Seriously, I was toying around with the idea of trimming the center down by ripping the seams open and trimming all five centre panels to make them conform to standard sizing, when I thought “why bother ripping seams? why not just get creative and scrunch up the red fabric for a 3-D effect?” This would look like so (again, imagine the borders and corner panels, please).
This has good and bad aspects. Good: no more seam-ripping, cutting or re-sewing; makes the quilt truly original and innovative. Bad: may be hard to quilt through multiple layers; takes away from traditional look; could be perceived as bad form in quilt competition; may not feel as nice and snuggly to the touch as a flat quilt; could be harder to launder.
Please help me to decide what to do with my design problem!
I chose the easiest option that would get the thing done. 🙂 I know shit about quilting, but I suspect that competition people are stodgy, so if you’re thinking of entering it, you should probably finish it nice and flat. Plus, I’m worried that the scrunched bits will be too hard to quilt, and then those sections could be kind of ruined.
Weird sizes are perfectly good for use — over a chair, just around the feet, decorating the foot of the bed. Unless the dimensions are also a problem for competitions, in which case you might have to do the ripping and resewing… but what a pain! Bah.
The scrunching idea is fun, but maybe try it on another piece where you plan around it — make it the main feature and choose a really lightweight fabric for that section, so that it’s not so difficult to do.
Gosh, I’m opinionated for someone who has no clue!
Couldn’t you just cut out a strip down the center of the red pieces to make them narrower, and then sew it back together? (So, you would have a seam down the center of the red pieces where you removed a couple of inches of fabric. Does that make any sense?) In fact, you could just fold the red in half and sew a seam down the fold, and then cut the excess off, right?
Then instead of ripping out 4 seams, you’d just be sewing up 2. I don’t think it would look too weird to have a seam down the center of the red panels either. If you quilted over it you probably wouldn’t even notice it. Or, it could be a design feature!
This is possibly a completly moronic suggestion so ignore if so. 🙂
Here’s the thing – in terms of actual USE, when the heck was the last time a “crib” quilt actually stayed in a kid’s crib? Please. I say make it larger, if it gets used in a regular crib, the parent will improvise & fold the bottom edge over – otherwise, ten bucks says that colorful piece of lurve will be trown over some small tot until approximately the age of four while they’re watching cartoons on the couch. Stay Flat, Baby!
or could you do something like –
Centre striped panel – 8″ , red panels – 8″ each, outer striped panels – 4 1/2″ each, borders – 6″ each.
Or some variation of. That way, no ripping of seams, just cutting.
Actually, that is still symetrical. So there.
Or, you could smock it instead of scruching it. You’d get the texture and it would take up fabric, but it would be much more regular and neat. It would also likely take a lot longer.
This is the best I could find for instructions. You would probably have to buy a book on the subject.
http://sewing.about.com/library/sewnews/library/aatiptech0703.htm
http://members.aol.com/gabandgo/what.html
You would probably have to buy a book on the subject.
Dude, don’t tell her that! 😉
Sorry, sorry, I forgot to turn off “craft enabler” mode! ;D
Personally, I like it better with the narrower panels, whether you narrow them by scrunching or by using kitlizzy’s idea or by seam ripping and re-sewing. It’d just have better proportions, somehow. And the red would pop more as an accent, whereas right now it almost feels overwhelming.
Anyway as for whether to scrunch or not… I think it’d be a really neat detail. And I think it might even be the sort of thing that’d appeal to quilt judges – innovative techniques always get lots of attention. Quilting through it, though? That might be tough.