Thread: I took your advice and here is what I have accomplished so far

Hi, ladies:
I posted a message here a few days ago and I asked for advice on background fabric choice. I've worked on my top and here is what I have so far. First picture is the final product. Second picture is my draft layout.

What I did was sew each print directly on the background fabric. like put a picture on an album page. This way, I can easily put each print on the spot where I want it to be. But all the seams can be seen. I am not sure many of you agree with this approach. I am not very good at sewing. I don't know if I am capable of achieve this by another way - keeping all the seams inside. I don't know the technique term for that either. Still very new to the quilting.

As for border, do you think it would be better to use the same fabric of background and just use a small gold and black strip to frame/separate the main part?

Thanks for looking and thanks for all the tips, advice, and messages.

I also love all the great quotes everyone has that comes along with messages. Very inspiring!

If I am understanding what you have done here, you are going to create appliques on a whole cloth quilt. If you want the seams on the inside, you would have to cut the whole cloth (background fabric) into appropriate sizes for each "patch" and then sew those together. I don't see a problem with the way you are doing it, you will need to secure the edges of the patches down. Sewing around with just a single stitch might not hold up under wear and tear. Either a satin stitch (really tight zigzag) or a regular zig zag would be better than just a single stitch. Depends on the look you want and how much time you want to spend. If you turn the edges under on each piece it would be neater, and then a single stitch might be sufficient, but I might still do a zig zag. You've done a great job on placement and colors are awesome! Good luck!

Hi, Linda:

Thanks for the message. I already sewed all the patches on the background fabric. They are all single stitch with the edges fold under. I never thought of zig zag approach. I might give it a try on some of the blocks. Thanks for the advice.

Your quilt top looks great! You did a good job. As for borders, you may just want to experiment. If I read correctly, you are thinking of a narrow inner border of black and gold and then a larger border of the background fabric? I think that would look very good, but I am so bad at those decisions that I would have to lay each fabric by the top and see how it looked.

At any rate, I am confident that you will make a good decision.

Dina

If you folded the square edges under and top stitched them to the fabric, than that is fine. What you have done is called applique.

If the edges of each of those patches is turned under and machine stitched down with a straight stitch that is secure enough....

I think a narrow gold sash around center panel, then border would look very nice...good job

Thanks everyone. I learned one more thing about quilting - I can do applique!

Love your top and it is a fabulous first effort. Welcome to quilting AND applique.

I had a customer who wanted to do something with a bunch of rectangles her mother had dyed but was a novice sewer and she did basically the same thing. She didn,t care about the raw edges and used navy backing fabric as her background.