Crazy Waves

Yesterday the freezing rain kept me indoor and today there are strong winds. Instead of complaining about the wintery weather,  I went to my sewing machine and quilted my crazy patch. This top-quilt was made two years ago. Bad winter days are great for catching up on a thing. Something would take that opportunity to clean up my sewing room or reorganized little things. 

One evening I drew three different designs for my crazy patch quilt. At this point, I have to admit, I find it a bit challenging to come up with new designs and find my creativity non-existent. But I refused to give up, so I stayed at the kitchen table with my pencil in hand,  and the black/white photo of my quilt, and drew lines and waves or whatever fancied my mind.  In the end, my daughter and I both liked option #1: crazy waves effect.

Two years ago, when I stitched decorative designs on every crazy patch with my Janome 7700. At the time, I didn't realize all those decorative stitches would be quilted all over them.  For that reason, I've chosen a simple overall design that blended with the entire top-quilt.  I was surprised yesterday how much quilting I completed in two hours by listening to a few podcasts.

Crazy Patch Quilt

This very simple pattern used a ‘stack into a strip and cut’ technique. Not sure if there is another name for this one. You can find the Sophisticated Crazy Patch by Nancy Vasilchik in the book Quilting in Black & White by Leisure Arts.

I marked my first wave, starting from the length of the left border, drew across its middle, and finished on the length of the right border. Only drew four waved and they were marked 2" apart because I used the walking foot guide for the rest.

 By back was taped to the table, then I laid the batting and top and pressed over it because my batting was too wrinkled.  Then I pinned it all the layers.

 It a good practice to lay a few thread choices over your quilt. For this quilt, I wanted my tread to blend with the fabric. The backing is grey.

  I used the guide with the walking foot for the entire quilt.

Trimming the Binding

 Use the side of your ruler to square off. Even if you square everything, sometimes it's better to trim a little off the border and have a straight edge and wavy one. make sure that the inner border it straight too. There is a lot of movement going on because of quilting. You can fix it by tugging gently of the edge of the fabric till everything aligns nicely.

Binding 

To make my binding colorful and original, I used stripes fabric and cut it on its width. It makes a really nice border.