A Tutorial on Binding Scallops

I finished this quilt well over a year ago and have never gotten around to blogging about it.  Isn’t that bad?   I made it for my office – or should I say, my husband’s office.

It’s nice and manly right?  Actually, my poor husband doesn’t have any  of his own “manly” rooms in our house, as I can’t bear to give up any quilt/decorating spaces!  I guess this room will have to do until we finish up a man cave in the garage.

The reason I am bringing up this quilt, is that I have wanted to do a quick tutorial on binding scallops.  I have done tutorials on lots of binding techniques and I have had some requests to cover scallops as well.

I begin by MARKING my curved lines on the quilt, as shown by the yellow line in the bottom of the photo (more hints on marking the curve to come in my next post).  The key here is NOT TO CUT the curve, just mark it.  If you cut the curve, then you have to sew next to a stretchy, bias curved edge.  NOT FUN.

Begin sewing along the curve by lining up the raw edge of the binding with the drawn line.

Sew until you reach the top inside point of the scallop.  This point will be a seam allowance width above the drawn line.   It is easier to show this with a photo of how it looks after it is sewn.  See the red dot on the top inside point of the binding?  That is where you will stop and pivot.

Now, back to that pivot point – be sure to stop with your needle DOWN, as shown, then turn the quilt so you are ready to sew along the next part of the curve.

Next, use your fingers to swing the binding over to meet the drawn line.  The key here is NOT to get a tuck along the left side of the needle, but you will have one along the right side.

I usually use the point of my seam ripper to assist in getting the tuck of the fabric underneath the foot of my machine, like this.

If you have done it correctly, it will look like this:  See – there is no tuck in the fabric above your sewing line, but there is a tuck to the bottom side.

Still with me?

This is how it will look after you fold the binding  fabric over the sewing line.  See that nice little mitered corner?

If your binding looks as shown so far, you can continue sewing along the drawn line, making the swoop along the large outside curve.  The trick to this part, is to work in a little excess fabric along the bottom of the curve as shown.  See the slight excess fabric ripple along the folded edge of the binding?

This part takes a little bit of practice.  You need to get just the right amount of extra fabric for the curve.   With really round curves, you will need to work in more excess fabric than if you have a flatter curve.  I usually sew one curve first, then cut off the excess fabric so I can fold the binding to the back side and see if the curve lays flat.

Repeat until you have bound along all the curves as shown.  Now you can cut along the drawn line, so you are ready to hand-stitch around the curves.

There are several little tricks that I use for to doing the hand sewing on the binding.

First, you can refer to this tutorial for my hand-stitching technique for bindings.

Secondly, you will need to take a few extra steps for making the mitered corners.

Before you get to that inside mitered corner, flip the quilt over so the front side is facing up.   Pin the miter in place from the front side of the quilt as shown.  (this is a different quilt and a different angle, but it is still the same technique)

Turn the quilt over so the back side is facing up and stitch to the miter as shown.  Notice how the pin is still in the front side of the miter, holding everything in place while you are stitching.

Bring the needle up inside the point as shown and do a couple of tacking stitches.  If you don’t do this, the miter will just pull out after the pin is removed and you will never get it back in place!!  I have learned this from personal experience ;-(

This photo shows doing  the tacking stitches  from the front side of the quilt.  After the tacking stitches are done, continue toward the next miter.

This is how the back side looks after the hand stitching is completed.  See how the curves lay nice and flat?

Next, I added a rod pocket to the back side  of the quilt and hand-stitched it in place. (I cut this piece 5″ wide – Fold in half with wrong sides together, sew the long side with a 1/4″ seam and turn right-side out).

Slide a curtain rod through the pocket, hang and enjoy!

This quilt pattern was based on the Hopscotch pattern from my Fat Quarter Five book. The fabric used is Sanae. The chevron runner shown is from our On the Run book.

In my next post I am going to share some hints for figuring out the size of the curves, plus a few ways to make the process go faster.  Faster is good when it comes to scallops, trust me.  I have learned from experience, so I am anxious to share these tips with you also!  (I just didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much info in one post).

Edit:  Click here for the link to Part 2 of Binding Scallops

I am off to finish one of my boy baby quilts.  I hope you have a great weekend!

Baby/Bump Update

Once again the last couple weeks have flown by without a blog post.  I have been busy “nesting” and working on lots of quilt projects.   My nesting has involved cleaning out closets (which doesn’t make for a very interesting blog post), taking down the Christmas decorations, and freshening up my decor with a few brighter quilts.  I have also spent way too much time on the internet looking at baby nurseries (which once again, doesn’t make for a very interesting blog post).

Gypsy Girl from the book Fat Quarter Five. Fabrics from the Verna collection by Kate Spain

(click here to see the Gypsy Girl Pattern)

I started the nesting process last fall when I needed to keep myself occupied while we waited for test results.  I was really craving bright light and colors at the time, so I repainted several rooms in the house, including my front entry.

Both the yellow and the red have been lightened and brightened.  I ordered a new rug from Company C.  I find it really hard to find rugs that are just the right colors, so I was excited to find this one.  I wanted it to match the Secret Garden fabric (by Sandi Henderson) that I had been collecting, with the intention of making a new quilt for my entry.  After getting sidetracked several times, I finally got the borders on the quilt and it will be the next quilt on my quilting machine.

I added a few colors to the original Secret Garden line, just to make it blend better with my rug.  I added the darker red, darker blue dot, and the browns.  It added the extra pop of color that I was looking for.

(BTW – the pattern is called Modern Day Diamonds and can be found in my Living Large book.)

As I am working on my quilts, I am continually taking pictures of the process – either to remember the placement of the fabrics or to audition different design elements.  I find that if I don’t have a picture, I won’t remember it!  Lately, all of my pictures have had a funny addition at the bottom of the shot ~

Yes, that would be the “bump”.  Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to get it to show in the photo?  Not a problem anymore.  What a difference 4 weeks will make!

I am currently at 22 weeks and we just had another ultra sound yesterday.  We are so happy to say that everything looks really good!  I was shocked to find out that the baby is in  the 90th percentile for weight  (though of course, that can change).  I guess there was a good reason that the bump has expanded so much in the last month!

We also found out what we are having – the doctor is 95% sure that it is a boy.  The baby didn’t give us a” perfect” shot of the goods, but there were several shots that can really only be explained by being a boy.

So, in case you were wondering, on Joel’s side, we will have a total of 6 girls and 2 boys (counting just the grandkids.  Joel has 3 sisters and no brothers, so that would skew the numbers a bit).

On my side, we have just the opposite with 2 girls and 6 boys.  The slightly scary fact, is that all 6 of those boys will be 5 and under when our baby is born!  Life is gonna get crazy!!!!

Either way, we are just so excited to have good news to report and didn’t care what it was.  We couldn’t wait to share our news with all of you!  (and start taking name submissions, if anyone has any good ideas 😉 )

Seaside Cottage

After about 7 or 8 months of not having any new products to show you, I finally have something new to share!  I have gotten the go-ahead to spill the beans on a new fabric line that will be coming out later this year.  I painted the line up last summer, so it seems like I have been waiting a while to show you! 

My inspiration began with all the images of cute cottages I had been seeing on blogs like House of Turquoise. (one of the best decorating blogs, in my opinion.)  I loved the cottages with weathered grey siding and a turquoise front door.  Isn’t it a great combo?

Love it!!!!  I could just move right in . . .  It makes me think of ocean waves, beaches, quaint cottages, white picket fences, sand in my toes, and cupcakes with extra thick frosting.  (Ok – maybe that last part is the bump talking, but you get the idea)

It makes me want to change the siding on my house or repaint – which of course I can’t do. 

But couldn’t I create a fabric line with this same feeling? 

 A cottage look with fresh colors?

I really wanted to do another line with more grey.  Last year Mom and I put out Whimsy, with one grey print, just to see how it would go over.  It was the first print to sell out!  So, I started mixing paint, adding more grey and using some of my favorite colors.  I came up with this line:

A look inside the sales card:

It’s a little hard to photograph off of a shiny sales card, so here is a closer look at the CADs of each color grouping

The grey prints:

The blue prints:

The cherry red prints:

The ivory prints:

The chocolate brown prints:

And lastly, the pink and green prints:

If you are quilt shop owner, now is the time to place your order for this line.  It is hitting the road with the Henry Glass sales reps this month – And if you don’t get in on the order with the first printing, you more than likely won’t be able to get it at all, so now is your chance!

If you are a quilter, this line will be hitting stores in June.  I will keep you posted when we get closer to the actually shipping date.  In the meantime, if you are interested in this line, you can let the quilt shop owners know!

I am really excited for this line to come out.  It seems to take forever from the time I paint it up, to the time it comes out . . . but I was anxious to show everyone.  I hope you like it!