Heat Press Batting Together

Hi all!

I was recently asked to try out and review Heat Press Batting Together a fusible cloth tape for fusing your batting pieces together.  I have to admit at first I was quite skeptical since I can easily sew together batting pieces using a multi-stitch zig-zag on my sewing machine.  However, looking at my sewing job using my sewing machine I always seem to stretch out the batting a bit while I sew it and I have to fan-dangle the batting, after it is sewn, to get it to lay flat again.  So since I had a baby quilt I want to load onto my frame I decided to give the Heat Press Batting Together a try.

I first trimmed up my batting pieces so that they were even instead of jagged edges and laid it on my ironing board.

Lay the tape down across the cut rough side down and quickly press it into place.  This was honestly very fast and very easy.  I used a cotton batting here.

Once you have pressed it down you are ready to go!  So fast - so easy!!

 

The little blip in the seam was my fault since I didn't push the edges up against each other well enough at first - I thought that I would still show this picture though to show that this can happen if you're not careful ;-)  The seam is smooth and flat and is NOT stretched out at all - like when I stitch mine together using a sewing machine.

So final verdict - this is a great product!  I am definately going to use this product instead of sewing my batting together from now on.  It is much easier, does a better job, is faster and does not put excess lint into my bobbin area of my sewing machine.  Win - win - win!

The only negative I see is that it comes on a small roll with 10 yards of tape on a roll - I would love to see a larger roll of the tape so that I won't have to buy as many ;-)

Have any of you tried Heat Press Batting Together before?

On the Design Wall

I have finally finished sewing the blocks!  It feels like I have been working on these for a long time now - well I did sort the scraps back in 2008 ;-)  But, piecing these blocks took me a while.  Probably because the pieces were quite small - but wow - am I glad the quilt top is coming together!

 

Now I am just finalizing the layout before I put the little place tags on the blocks and start to sew the rows together.  I keep seeing blocks that need to be switched around so I think I'll sit on this for a day before I finalize anything else.

I am really enjoying this quilt.  I am enjoying watching it come together and I am really liking how all those little pieces are going into a quilt instead of the garbage bin!  This quilt has been quite a journey for me and I am really enjoying that as well.  I've been posting along with the journey - so I hope that you're not getting tired of this quilt!  But, if you haven't seen this quilt before you can take a look at some of my previous posts about it here, here and here.

The only thing is now I think it needs to be larger - it needs a pieced border I think!  Any thoughts?  Or should I take one step at a time and cross that bridge when I come to it?

Another Finish and A Publication!

Hey all!  

I thought that I would share with you some news - Accuquilt featured an article I wrote for them entitle "The 13 Cent Quilt Block using the GO! Bountiful Baskets" which you can view on their website if you'd like to take a look!  The article focuses on the Postage Stamp Basket block - which you know I love!  Writing the article was a new experience for me and I learned a lot - namely how much time something like that takes to put together LOL!  I hope that you'll take a couple of minutes to give the article a read and let me know what you think!

I've also been able to finish anther quilt.  This is my scrappy "Jelly Roll Race" quilt that I did out of my 2.5" strip bin.  It was so great to use some of those scraps and make a quilt completely from scraps and stash!  It was great to get this finished even though the top was only completed in August.

 

 

I quilted it using a 50 weight cotton thread top and bobbin in an all over wave pattern that really gives some texture to the quilt.

 

I also used up some of those Halloween 2" squares, as leaders and enders, making a couple of little fabric baskets and a zippered case while I was working on my Chimneys and Cornerstones blocks. It's great to be making progress on this quilt after all that cutting and cutting!

 

I am almost finished all 80 of the blocks needed for the center of the quilt - yep -80!  It seems like such a big number doesn't it?  Then I am thinking about one or two borders - and maybe piecing one of those borders from more scraps.  Lots of work still to do!  But, it is so nice to use up these bits and pieces.  

But, you know what?  I don't even remember buying a few of those fabrics!  I'm sure they aren't mine so where did they come from??  So, either scraps have babies, or, someone came over and dumped some fabric in my scrap heap when I wasn't looking!  Was it you??!!

Another Skeleton Finished!! And a Winner!!!!

Yey!!  I have completely finished another skeleton!!

My son's quilt is completely finished - binding label and everything!  I ran outside, while the rain had stopped, to take some pictures of the quilt when the light was so nice.  I threw the quilt over my flowers and snapped away!  Towards the end of the pictures it started sprinkling again so I ran inside.

 

This is the quilt that I started a long long time ago.  When my oldest son was 8 he picked out the fabrics from my stash and he chose the pattern.  He was very specific in what he wanted.  He wanted green, yellow and blue bars in that order and he didn't want prints - he wanted almost solid fabrics.  I cut the strips and he sewed them together on my sewing machine.  He did a great job!  We made this top right around the same time that I was working on my younger son's pumpkin quilt back in 2007!!  Needless to say he is a little older now ;-)

When I asked him what fabric he wanted for the border he chose the print - but it was one that would really have to be mitered so I put it on a hanger and let it sit for a while.  When I was asked to review Lapel Stick I thought that it would be a great chance to try it out while mitering the borders so I did a tutorial and review and mitered the borders.  Then, guess what?  I put it back onto the hanger and let it sit until I had time to do the quilting.

 

Don't those borders look great though?  The miters worked out really well.

Now that I have my new frame I loaded the quilt onto the frame and asked my son how he wanted it quilted.  I asked if he wanted big squiggles or loops?  He said - NO!  Straight lines LOL!

 

So straight lines it is!  I used a 30 weight Sulky Blendable cotton thread top and bobbin and machine quilted crossing straight lines.  Some stars just magically appeared and added to the fun.   He is really happy with it - and really happy that it is finally finished!!  

This quilt took me a few years to finish - mostly because I allowed myself to get side-tracked and work on other things instead of sticking to it and finishing.  But, honestly, I like that I've had a bit of a back-log of quilts to get through once I got my frame.  It gave me some instant practice quilts AND it kind of justified the purchase of the frame.  Part of me wants to rummage through my closet and see if there are any more tops ready to quilt hiding in there.  And part of me doesn't want to LOL!!  I know I have a couple of WIP's in there (works in progress) so I don't count those.  One is my rework quilt that will be hand-quilted and one is the Dessert Nine-Patch that I am still trying to decide if I want to put a border on.  I just can't decide yet for that one.  I still have a couple of baby quilts to load on though so maybe the rummaging will wait for another day ;-)

So what do you think?  Have I spawned another generation of quilters in my house?

Ok ok I have kept you waiting long enough - or did you skip to the end?? 

I used the random number generator at random.org to choose between 1 and 195 VALID entries.  The rest of the entries were no-reply blogger - sigh - this means I had no way to contact these people - sorry guys!  I had a lot of interest in the give-away for the kit so I might just do more give-aways like this - what do you think?

And the winner was comment #60!!!

Mommarock has left a new comment on your post "Fall Chisel Table-Runner":

This is the greatest idea! I would make this :)

Congratulations Mammarock you are the winner of my fabric kit!  I hope that you like it!