Welcome My First Guest Blogger and Giveaway!

Introducing my guest...  a quilt artist, author, and teacher, Margaret Bucklew. Margaret has written a book called Step by Step Portrait Art Quilts. The cover itself is really amazing. Today Margaret is going to share how to finish the edges of portrait and pictorial quilts.

Which finish is best?

How to finish the appliqué edge was a huge concern for me when I was afraid to try appliqué. Since I am self taught, I looked to books to find out the proper way to finish edges on appliqué pieces only to discover there are quite a few ways to secure and complete the edge.

I dearly love needle turn, but that’s not the edge finish I use on portrait and pictorial quilts. With needle turn you must add a little fabric to each piece so you can turn it under and stitch; with fusible appliqué there is no need to turn under the edges.

Once I began to use fusible for the appliqué pieces, I was then confronted with how to control and complete the edges in such as way as to highlight each piece and add to the depth and texture to the work.

My choices were raw edge, zig zag, or satin stitch, hmmm which would I choose? Satin stitch was out because I didn’t feel I needed that amount of thread and it would add to the bulk of the quilt. Raw edge was out because I was afraid the edges would fray too much. Although art quilts aren’t tossed into a washing machine the way a utility quilt might be, I was still afraid of the look of frayed edges, so raw edge was out.

I settled on a zig zag stitch. Setting the width of the stitch to 1.5 is about right for me until reaching the small, narrow areas of the fabric. Of course, the width needs to be narrowed or the thread will overtake the fabric. When putting type on a quilt sometimes the thread really does overtake the fabric and it looks as if I never had fabric on the letters.

A stitch length of .8 gives a nice zig zag and yet not too tight to look like a satin stitch. My preferences may be slightly different than yours, as we all see things differently.

Sometimes I use contrasting thread to make an area stand out, but usually I use matching thread as closely to the fabric color as possible. If I’m not happy with the look of one color thread, I’ll add a second color and go over the same area just completed. The two colors blend and look great.

We cover this and more in our “Step by Step Portrait Art Quilts: Learn to Create Realistic Portrait and Pictorial Quilts”. The book is both in print or eBook. This is a short link to take you to Amazon for more information about the book: http://goo.gl/RguGS. This is the short link to the ebook on Kobo: http://goo.gl/HDVnT

For a few more tips, please visit the next blog in the book blog tour.

Blog Tour Hosts

Day 4

Jackie’s Art Quilts

http://jabotquilt.blogspot.com/

Day 5

Quilting and Sewing Videos 

 http://www.quilt-video.com

Thanks Margaret for sharing those tips on how to finish the applique edges. Now for the giveaway! Margaret is giving her Ebook to one of my lucky readers. Just leave me a comment and I will announce the winner on March 16 after the book tour. Thanks Margaret for offering the book to one of my readers and for asking me to be part of your book tour. It has been very informational.

With Passion,

Carrie P.