Fray Check makes the woven heart stronger by Nancy Devine March 9, 2016 written by Nancy Devine March 9, 2016 761 A lovely basket that elevates our quilt into another dimension. These next steps for making a cheerful Scandinavian-inspired quilted wall hanging, will have a lot of help from Fray Check, a stabilizer, the running and zigzag stitches. Now that the cut edges of the basket have been stabilized by the skillful application of Fray Check, let’s get it ready for placement on center stage of the Laughing Flowers wall quilt. Clip any stray threads that have not been contained by the Fray Check. Outline each square of the woven heart with embroidery thread, using a running stitch. This is quite tricky, but it’s necessary to stabilize the weaving. Apply Fray Check to the cut edges of the woven basket fingers. Outline each square of the heart weaving with embroidery thread, using a running stitch. A stunning pair to create a lovely edge to our woven basket. Zigzag the edges of the heart, taking care not to accidentally sew it closed, I found that marking the start and stop points of the bottom of the heart with pins was helpful. I used embroidery thread and a machine embroidery needle to do the stitching. You’ll find the embroidery needle is both very sharp and has a larger, stronger eye to accommodate the thicker, more robust embroidery thread. Using the proper needle will ensure that the stitches are pretty and the thread won’t break. Zigzag the edges of the heart basket, making at least two passes to fill in the edge. Sew the buttons to the heart, and then tie them for a decorative finish. Iron on another piece of heavyweight woven interfacing trimmed, about ¼ʺ smaller than the heart, to the back of the shape. This will help stabilize it before it’s attached to the wall quilt. Download the wording for the quilt and print it out on inkjet printer fabric. If you prefer, you can download this version and embroider the words onto the wall quilt. If you’re doing this, you’ll need to use some stabilizer, and do the embroidery prior to the quilting. I like to cut out the wording patch using a wave-edge rotatory cutter, but pinking shears are also an option. Now that stabilizer and Fray Check have made the woven heart stronger, we’ll be quilting the substrate for our wall quilt, which is an artsy fancy way of saying getting the backdrop ready for the our laughing flowers basket, when we visit together tomorrow. This is part 3 of 5 in this series. Go back to part 2: How making fabric tulips is a meditative process Go to part 4: Sulky’s PolyLite thread adds shimmer to wall quilt [shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”23735596″] Print this page or save as a PDF fray checkGutermann threadlaughing flowers wall hangingrunning stitchstabilizerzigzag stitch FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinRedditWhatsappTelegramEmail Nancy Devine Nancy Devine is a self-confessed craft-crazed blogger. She is a regular contributor to A Needle Pulling Thread Magazine, one of the administrators for The Craft Café, a Facebook page devoted to the international sharing of the creative life, and a curator of an impressive collection of fabrics, notions and seam rippers. In her spare time, she wrangles dust bunnies and writes a blog called Nancy Dee Needleworks. Understandably, her house is a mess. previous post How making fabric tulips is a meditative process next post Sulky’s PolyLite thread adds shimmer to wall quilt YOU MAY ALSO LIKE... 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Fray Check is on my essentials list, as it enables one to do things like weave hearts from fabric. I hope you try this little wall quilt, and thanks for stopping by for a visit! Reply Claire Sutherland March 15, 2016 - 3:29 am I used fray check for the first time for my buttonholes and was very impressed . Reply Nancy Devine March 15, 2016 - 6:33 pm It’s great stuff, isn’t it? I love how it dries clear. It’s like our secret weapon against frayed threads. Thank you for stopping by QUILTsocial.com Reply Laura March 11, 2016 - 2:01 pm I quite often use fray check to seal things, but had never thought about using it in this way. Thanks for the interesting tutorial. Reply Leave a Comment Cancel Reply Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.