On my design wall – 2013.06.12

The preschool quit is finished – I love how it turned out!  I’m delivering it today to one of the parents.

I quilted it with straight lines with a light lime-green thread.  The vertical quilting lines are about 2.25 inches apart, and the horizontal line about 5 inches apart.

On a quilt like this, I would normally use a 2.25 inch strip for binding, attached entirely by machine, which would finish to about 3/8 inch on the front.  On this quilt, I wanted the striped binding to be about the same width as the frames for the hand-prints.  With a bit of experimentation, I determined that a 3 inch strip, sewn 1/4 inch from the edge on the back, would finish at 3/4 inch when folded to the front.

Originally, I had planned to attach a standard hanging sleeve, split in the middle.  But given that the quilt is 77 inches long, more than one split might be required for the hanging rod supports.  The parents told me they haven’t decided exactly what type of hardware they will use to hang it, so we don’t know how many supports there will be, or how far apart they will be.  So I turned to the Internet for alternative hanging options.  I found this post by Mary Burns at Martingale, showing a variety of hanging methods.  I was intrigued by the invisible hanging tab technique at Modify Tradition.

I decided to use several mini-sleeves (a hybrid of tabs and sleeves).  Here’s a little tutorial about how I made the mini-sleeves.

I hemmed the sides of a 6.5 by 48 inch piece of fabric, then cut it into 8 pieces, each 7 inches long.  I folded each piece in half and positioned them with the raw edges along the top of the quilt, and caught the raw edges in the stitching when I bound the quilt.  When I hand-sewed the bottom of each mini-sleeve, I left some slack so there is room for the hanging rod.  I positioned the sleeves with a gap of 4 inches between each one, with one of the gaps right at the center of the quilt.  This will provide a lot of flexibility for hanging hardware and number of supports, while ensuring the quilt won’t sag when hung on the rod.

As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday.  Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.