New stuff

The Fourth of July is over and it's time to get quilting again!  In my last post I mentioned that I had tried a few new things when made my Leap Year quilt, and now I'm back to give out some details!

A piping close up for a Joyful Quilter and anyone else who wanted to get a closer look.

For years I've been wanting to try to put some piping on my quilts and have just never given it a try......until now!  My LQS had a copy of Piping Hot Binding by Susan K. Cleveland at their Market Review in the fall and I picked one up.  It included a really cool tool and even some cording.  I had still never gotten around to giving it a try until this Leap Year Schnibble came along.  Since it didn't have any points in the border, it seemed like the perfect quilt for some piping!   

Making the piping.  The foot you chose will depend on your machine and your personal preferences.

The piping method that Susan describes in her book was easy and fun.  I've included a few pictures so you can get the idea of basic piping, but you really need to purchase Susan's book to get all of the information.  And of course the tool that she includes is amazing!!  It enables you to trim the piping so it's nice and straight and even, before you apply it to the quilt.  I think you'd have a really hard time getting the piping on the quilt with such nice results, if you didn't have this tool.  I'm sure there are other piping methods out there.  I don't know what they are, but I don't feel the need to look around at all because I don't imagine it gets much easier than Susan's method.  I was really pleased with the results and right now I'm going through my stack of quilt tops looking for another quilt that needs some piping.  It looks like that might be my Recess Schnibble!

Actually applying the piping to the quilt.
The piping has already been cut with the tool at this point.

Another new technique I tried is sewing to the tip of the quilt corner when doing a mitered corner on the binding.  I should have taken a picture of this.......I think plenty of quilters miter their corners this way, it's just not the way I learned how to do it.  I always just sewed straight off the edge of the quilt instead of turning and sewing at a 45 degree angle when I got to the corner.  In the end, you get the same results, but I found that my corners wanted to miter much easier when I tried sewing off at the 45 degree angle.  I don't know why I never did that before.  Am I the only one that was continuing to sew straight when mitering the corner?

Now it's time to put on the binding.

 Also, have you tried these Wonder Clips yet?  They are so cool!  Nice and flat on the bottom so they slide nicely under the sewing machine.....Did you notice that in the pictures?.......A perfect size to use when hand sewing the binding on too.  They have markings on them so you can clip a project at a consistent spacing if you need to.  These markings are visible on the picture below.  It's been awhile since I found a new product that I love as much as these Wonder Clips.  They seem to be available all over the place.

Wonder Clips by Clover are wonderful!!
  Notice the markings on the clip on the left.

I was planning on showing the new quilting I did on Leap Year too, but this post is getting a bit long don't you think?  I'll just have to save it for next time!

Now that our vacation is over and our guests have left, it's time for summer camp! To my son that means kayaking, canoeing, archery, duct tape crafts and all kinds of other fun things. To me that means I will have plenty of lake water soaked items to wash out each night and will I have a week to do some more quilting, blogging, and catching up on some blog visiting too! See you again soon!!