Stay warm with a quilt made with Fairfield batting

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how useful the Hemline Gold Thread Snips, Hemline Gold Plastic Headed Pins, in black or white, and the Hemline Gold Magnetic Pin Dish are for pinning and sewing your blocks together. We often overlook the importance of these smaller tools that are so important when quilt making.

My plan for today is to quilt. The backing is ready, and now I just need to baste the quilt. The batting I’m using is the Fairfield Quilter’s 80/20 Quilt Batting – 229 x 274cm (90″ x 108″). I like the warmth of this batting in a quilt.

To quilt, you need needles and thread. Since this is a T-shirt quilt, I’m using SCHMETZ #4026 Chrome Jersey Needles – 90/14.  The tip of a jersey needle is more rounded than a universal needle and is designed to push the fabric fibres apart without cutting them, preventing the knit fabric from laddering or running after stitching. Before I decide what color thread to use for quilting, I look at the over all quilt top. Even though this quilt has a few white blocks, I’m using an ivory-colored thread because I think it will blend better. I’m using GÜTERMANN Cotton 50wt Thread 250m in Ivory.

Because I’ll be using this quilt a lot, I’ll do very easy quilting on it. Easy quilting is what I opt for on most of my quilts; ones I know will be well-used.

I use the Sew Easy Quilting Ruler – 24″ x 6¹⁄₂″ (61 x 16.5cm) to mark where my quilting lines will be. This step only takes a few minutes. In my case, if I don’t mark, my lines would look more like waves.

After I’ve made the initial quilting lines, I’ll add other quilting lines that will go through the sides of the blocks. Once the quilt is quilted, you’ll get a grid effect of approximately 4” x 4” squares.

Now that the quilting’s done, it’s time to add the binding. I used the Hemline Gold Quilters Clips. I enjoy using them as they are easy to open and they apply a nice pressure to hold down the binding.

With the binding on, the quilt is completed and ready to be used.

Proper needles and threads are always underestimated. Get quality needles and thread such as the SCHMETZ #4026 Chrome Jersey Needles – 90/14 – 5 count and GÜTERMANN Cotton 50wt Thread 250m – Ivory to complete your quilt.

Come back tomorrow to check out a few different options for your next T-shirt quilts.

This is part 4 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 3: Pinning a quilt – It’s the little things that count

Go to part 5: T-shirt quilts – 4 ideas for layouts that work!