Fray Check makes the woven heart stronger

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.

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.

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.