The Project Quilting Challenge for the week is Common Blocks. The rule is to make a quilt with three common quilt blocks. There is also a quote "No one owns the copyright on a 16-patch block, or an Ohio star."
You have no idea how happy this challenge made me. I was working on a tutorial about whether you should pre-wash your fabric before making a quilt. I was thinking about making three nine patch blocks - one with all pre-washed fabrics, one with no pre-washed fabrics, and one with a mixture of both. I was debating making three different quilts, but wondering if I could get away with putting them all in one quilt, separated by sashing.
I wanted to keep as much similar as possible, so the experiment could focus only on whether the fabric was pre-washed. I used fabric from the same layer cake, so that the manufacturer, the cotton, even the dye would all be the same. I wanted to make the same block for all three blocks so that the comparison would be the same.
Making this quilt was fun. It took some added time to prewash the fabrics. I got impatient and pressed them dry, but they were small so it didn't take long, and these fabrics are not likely to shrink any more for sure. Strip piecing made the job easier, although with 10" squares, there wasn't much time savings involved with that.
I also didn't plan the right set up for recording the process for the video, since I was using the same space for pressing and cutting, so I had to keep putting up and taking down the ironing board.
I had another, much busier, border fabric planned, so I added the peach sashing to highlight the three blocks, but eventually I decided to switch out the busy border. I did think about switching the peach with the green, but that would involve ripping out seams, and with the weekly deadline, I decided not to risk it.
I took the quilt outside to take a good photograph. The lighting is better outside than inside.
I thought I would ask Zoey to be in the picture, so I told her to come to me, but when she did, she jumped on the quilt.
And got mud on it. It is a good thing I was planning on washing the quilt to complete the experiment.
4 comments:
Cute little runner and very interesting topic. I used to prewash everything. Now, with the exception of batiks I rarely prewash. I have a friend who has gotten a lot of her fabric from estate sales and washes the fabric to get rid of smells. She worries about mixing washed and unwashed fabrics - I'm going to direct her to your video when published.
Lovely! I'm interested to hear the end result (I'm not a pre-washer, but sometimes I'm gifted prewashed scraps)
That's a nice-looking runner... and an interesting challenge to follow. I cannot imagine not pre-washing fabric for a quilt. I've always been a pre-washer, and even then, have experienced bleeding in finished quilts (twice), and certainly lots of dye coming out in the washing machine or the dryer. My dryer drum has a big aqua sploch from Kona yardage that bled. So no experimenting for me! Wash fabric. Always. :-) Thanks for sharing your perspective.
How cool that you were able to find a project to meet two goals. Very pretty colors. I look forward to seeing the outcome of the washing experiment.
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