Still Q-ingAIG

(Quilting As I Go)

Securing the fleece is probably the most important prep step, so a quick baste around the two outside edges is best done before any of the strips are sewn on.

Also, with fleece I like to position the fabric with the fuzzy side showing. That's the soft side that's meant to be worn against the skin, so it makes sense to me to have it available to the touch.

The first string of fleece or flannel can be sewn to the triangle now. As an aside, my first thought when planning this top was that I'd have a corner of fleece and that side would then be filled with strips of regular cotton. On the flip side I planned a corner of cotton filled with strips of flannel and fleece. However, if done that way, it would have ended up with all the flannels/fleeces on one side of the block (top and bottom) and all the cottons on the other side, making it very uneven in thickness and warmth. If that doesn't make sense yet, I hope it does by the end of this post!

So, back to the first string, placed face down along the raw flannel/fleece diagonal edge and sewn with an eye-balled 1/4" seam. With fleece/flannel, I like to use 3 straight pins to keep things from creeping and shifting while I sew, even though I use a walking foot. It's worth the few seconds of time to keep things behaving! (I also found it difficult to remember, with the fleece strips, that the fuzzy side was the "right" side!)

This doesn't get opened up and ironed yet--it's important to keep the strip face down on the corner piece still.

The entire block, however, does get flipped over to the empty side, where a cotton triangle is positioned (face up) in the corner opposite the flannel/fleece triangle. The hypotenuse of the cotton triangle will cover the bobbin line by about 1/4". Lay a cotton strip face-down along the diagonal edge and eyeball-sew another 1/4" seam.

It's more likely than not that when you flip the block over and look at the fleece side, the seams won't be right on top of each other, and it doesn't matter in the least because they'll never show!

The inherent problem of getting those seams to line up means: having a wide first strip gives you more leeway to absorb this kind of stitching inaccuracy.

NOW we get to flip the strips and iron things down!

From here on out it's a matter of filling the corners by sewing down more strips. Stitching does show now, as the bobbin thread is creating a quilting line on the triangle below. For that reason I'm using the not-grey variegated thread in my bobbins--it's close enough to matching the color scheme and it'll no longer be lurking about in my quilting thread drawer, fooling me into believing it's a color that it's not.

7 bobbins? Yeah, that should just about do it!

As I ironed the first strips down, I went ahead and secured the cotton triangles with a little pin in the corner. It might help keep the fabric from creeping/shrinking in as the fleece strips are sewn down, and it might not--as I like to say, "It couldn't hoit!"

To supplement the too few fleece fabrics and scraps, I've cut a bunch of strips (varying from 1-1/2" to 2" wide) from all the pink flannels I can find. A friend had given me a bunch left over from when she made dresses for her little girls; otherwise, I don't know how I would have fleshed out this project without going out and buying something new!

I'm certain the center piece was purchased by me in a fit of weakness--why else would I buy flannel in Texas? Music notes! Must. Have. It.

I'm at the stage now where I can lay down a strip, put petal to the metal and let my machine race along at the 1500 stitches/minute for which she's designed. All I need do is keep it feeding fairly straight under the foot. It's liberating!

All the prep work has done quite a job on my poor cutting mat. It had already been compromised from trimming batting scraps (making the edges even so I could create frankenbatts) but this project put it right over the edge.

Looks like an angry child went to town with pink and black crayons!

Time to flip it--NOW I'm glad I paid the higher price for a double-sided mat!

And finally, back to this: "...my first thought when planning this top was that I'd have a corner of fleece and that side would then be filled with strips of regular cotton. On the flip side I planned a corner of cotton filled with strips of flannel and fleece. However, if done that way, it would have ended up with all the flannels/fleeces on one side of the block (top and bottom) and all the cottons on the other side, making it very uneven in thickness and warmth."

With this as a start,

you can see that if I had chosen fleece strips to finish out the pink triangle, they would all have been sewn to and quilting down the black fleece triangle. By the same token, had I used cotton fabrics to finish out the black fleece side, they would all have been sewn to the pink cotton triangle.