Deco Glam Sew-Along - WEEK 5
Now that our Quilt Top is done, let’s talk about finishing and quilting!
Batting Matters!
I’ve touched on this last week, but it’s work repeating: Batting is important! If you’re using dark or black fabric for your color C fabric, I highly recommend black batting for this quilt. Because our seams are pressed to the side with our FPP pieces, all the dark pieces in the seam allowance and rogue fraying threads will become absolutely invisible with dark batting! And as a bonus, a lighter batting won’t “beard” through the front when washed or dried. If you have a medium dark C color fabric and thus a higher number of light colors within your fans, you might do better with an off-white or white batting. If you’re unsure which batting fits your quilt, take a block (or your quilt top) to your Local Quilt Shop and place it on top of different color batting swatches! I highly recommend Quilter’s Dream batting, which I’ve used in all my Deco Glam samples!
Have fun with it!
Don't forget to add a quilt label (or two!). I like to add a label with the year I made the quilt in - but you can add all kinds of fun quilt labels.
This week, for US quilters, Amanda of Sweet Pea Design Company is giving away a set of quilting labels, so you can finish in style 😍 Amanda is also one of our grand prize sponsors, which means one US quilter will win free E2E quilting for one quilt! If you're not one of the lucky winners, she is also offering 20% off E2E quilting for all Deco Glam quilts sent her way (within the US)!
And don't forget about your backing! I scoured the internet for weeks for a matching backing for my multi-color, Eras Tour Inspired quilt - and eventually, I found my perfect match! When buying backing, I generally try to find a wide back fabric, because it’s more affordable and less piecing of the background fabric is required. But sometimes, for a really special quilt, I will buy regular width fabric and piece it together. Neutral colors, like black, white or off-white work for a backing as well – and I’ve been known to use bed sheets or thrifted fabrics. All of these can work as long as they’re 100% cotton. I also love backing my quilts with flannel if they’re going to be used as bed quilts or throws.
The icing on the cake: Quilting
Before you start quilting, I absolutely recommend sewing out the thread you’d like to use over some scraps of your fabrics. I sewed scraps from all the colors of my fans together in a row and practiced some echoed curves on it.
This will do two things: 1) Give you a preview of how well the fabric color fits (especially with variegated thread) and 2) It will help you fine-tune your sewing machine settings before you start, if you’re using your Domestic Sewing machine to quilt it yourself. I used Bernina’s Quilting stitch 1325, which has a stitch length of 3mm and a lower presser foot pressure (4.0) automatically applied. I noticed during my test that the reduced presser foot pressure helped a LOT with keeping the straight FPP lines from distorting.
Not sure how to quilt it?
Deco Glam is a pretty busy, geometric design, which means picking the right quilting motif can be challenging. I quilted each of my samples differently: Mocha Glam was custom quilted in all the background fabric parts, the “Emerald” colored cover quilt was quilted with just stitch-in-the-ditch along the fans (and lots of thread burying!) – and finally, my Eras Tour inspired Deco Glam was walking-foot-quilted on my domestic machine. That one was inspired by gentle echoed curves from Jacquie Giering’s book “Walk”, and also inspired by one of my testers who did some amazing walking foot quilting for her test quilt. A fourth option would be an overall E2E pantograph. Gentle waves, fans or similar large, soft shapes would be absolutely gorgeous. No matter your budget or space at home, you can do this!
The cherry on top: Binding
Keep it simple or go all out – binding can be a fun part of the process too! Because I had so many cut-off scraps from the FPP technique, I decided to go for a scrappy binding, and it did not disappoint! You can of course use a fabric matching background or backing - or pick one vibrant color from the quilt as a binding, if you want it to pop.
Watch out for my newsletter on Sunday, Sept 6th where I share how I made my scrappy binding from Deco Glam scraps!
What do you have in mind for quilting? I would love to hear your vision or quilting sneak peeks in this week’s Instagram post. Don’t forget to comment in our week 5 post after you’ve posted your progress, so you’re eligible for this week’s prizes.
If you’ve posted and commented about your progress for each week’s prompt by Sept 7th at 5pm, you’re eligible to win one of our grand prizes:
1) One Oliso TG1600 Pro Plus (for US, Canada, Germany sewists),
2) One FREE E2E quilting by Longarmer Amanda of Sweet Pea Design Company (US sewists)
3) One Aurifil x Quiltzauberei thread set (EU sewists)!
For week 5, we're also raffling off a set of tags by Sweet Pea Design company (US quilters) and a quilting ruler from Quiltzauberei (EU quilters)
Week 5 and Grand Prize winners will be notified on Instagram on September 7th after 5PM EST. Good luck!
