Not Your Average Wedding Guest Book
Ideas on how to use this quilt : Quilt for Baby (smaller size), Graduation, Wedding, Family Reunion, Family through the years, Loved one passed on, or really anything you want to remember.
MY FIRST QUILT
I got married on the 12th of July, 2014. Im a planner and I like to do things different then mainstream and way in advance. I know this isn't the first ever wedding quilt guest book, but its not something you see at every wedding. I knew I would never look through our wedding guest book and it wouldn't mean that much to me. I LOVE being warm though, and knew that would be the most sentimental to me. My husband is very easy going, so he's pretty much down with whatever when it comes to the specifics of how we do something. Have I mentioned how awesome my husband is?
I started WAAAY before the wedding day, drawing out what I wanted my quilt to look like. It was my first quilt so I decided to stay pretty basic with it. I measured out my quilt design to have my paper be 1 inch on paper equal to 6 inches of fabric. I figured out how big I wanted my blanket to be and I went to work on trying to fit everything together. You can just find a pattern that is already made, or you can design your own. I love creating, so I wanted mine to be unique and designed it myself. Keep in mind this is my first quilt. So there may be some errors. I wanted to share how I did mine though, so here it is!
YOU WILL NEED
Sewing Machine (Mine is a Janome DC1050)
Thread (The only thread color that matters is the bobbin when you are stitching in the ditch so that it doesn't stand out too much on your backing. My backing was bright pink so my bobbin thread was bright pink. The rest you won't see so I used white.)
Fabric scissors
Fabric rotary cutter (makes cutting straight lines easier)
Fabric cutting mat
Ironing Board
Iron
Saftey Pins
Pins
Printable Fabric sheets (I used printed treasures sew on sheets to print out my wedding pictures)
Fabric - You probably will not need all of the fabric. I over-estimated (its my first quilt, give me a break haha). I used my scraps to make my chevron baby blanket I have in my other tutorial.
Front: 2 yards coral,brown,blue and 3 yards of the tan and white. (You will have extra. I used my extra for the binding)
Back: 3 yards for pink backing (My pink fabric was 36x44 for a yard)
Binding:I used my extra fabric, it was roughly a yard
Batting:I bought this pre-washed king size from Jo-anne fabric here and didn't use it all
***anything you have left over can be used for future projects!
1. Designing the Quilt
If you are going to use large squares or rectangles, you need to keep in mind that the 6"x6" are going to come in a 1/4" for sewing on each side. So your large square won't be exactly 12"x12". I accidentally started sewing the pieces together at 1/2", so that took quite a chunk out of my larger pieces. I didn't feel like adjusting everything and unstitching so I just went with it. So due to that mistake, the sizes I did won't apply to you. you'll have to do the math to alter it. Mine ended up having the length of the rectangle with 1" off the end, and my squares having 1/2" off all four sides. ( I didn't just take 1" off width and length because there was already writing on mine and I tried to make as little casualty as possible.)
If you want to make yours the size mine ended up being (85"x85") then you can take my mistake and run with it. Just make sure to tell people to write as far from the edge as possible when they are signing your quilt squares. Most people wrote near the edge not realizing i was going to be sewing it together later. I had people only write on the big white squares and the small white squares.
2. How much fabric?
Once you have your quilt designed you will need to figure out how much of each fabric you will need. Then figure out how big your blanket is going to be and get the appropriate amount of fabric for your backing. If you buy a little bit too much fabric that is totally OK! Then you have left over fabric to make a beautiful scrap binding like I did. Or you can buy a premade binding, or buy fabric specifically to be your binding and make it from that. There are lots of options for your binding fabric.
I bought 2 yards of the coral, blue/turquoise, and brown. Then I bought 3 yards of the white and tan. I had a fair amount left over for most of the fabric. To get the white the size I need it to be however I had just barely enough.
For my backing I purchased 3 yards, but that is simple enough to figure out if you need a different size. When you know how big your quilt is going to be, measure it out and add a little forgiveness fabric, in case you make a mistake. Same goes with the batting. I just bought a pre-washed batting from Joanne's Fabric and Craft that was on sale and already cut, as mentioned back in the "Need" section.
***Remember that not all yards of fabric are made the same. A yard of fabric in length will always be the same, 36", because they cut it for you at the counter. However, they could all be different widths. Click here to find out a little bit more about yards of fabric, they give some great tips.
**Notice how their lovely words got cut off? Well now you can learn from my mistake. Tell your guests to sign as close to the centre as possible. Only sew a 1/4" so you don't take too much out of the writing, and make sure your larger shapes are sized proportionately.
3. Signing squares on wedding day
Once you have your quilt designed, your fabric purchased and cut, breathe easy! Take your lovely squares that you will have signed and your non-bleeding fabric markers to your special day. Instead of a guest book, they will sign your squares. YAY!
That day was so busy, I can't remember if I have a picture of the squares to be signed all set up. When I find it I will add it into this blog. So here is an example of one of the small squares.
4. Color code for easier sewing
I didn't have my pictures printed off yet ( no ink!! ooh no!!) so I color coded parts of my blanket that I would start sewing together. This actually made it phenomenally easy to make sure all of my pieces were being put into the right places on the quilt. If you are not adding pictures, you could actually have the entire quilt done before the wedding and then there is no hassle of cutting words off. They can just sign straight onto the quilt.
5. Adding Pictures
When I finally got my printer ink, I printed off my pictures. I swear I was being tested to build patience, because it took me two-three days to get my ink. I sent my husband the picture of the ink to buy, but didn't think to tell him what kind of printer we had. I didn't think it mattered. Well it did. He came home with the right ink, but it was meant for about 11 printers (not including ours) that had a certain capability and the ink didn't fit.
So the next day I was all ready to go to get the correct ink, when I remembered that the giant gate on our land wouldn't work and I was trapped... If I wanted to walk the half an hour drive to Costco from the top of the mountain in Tijeras I could have done that. I didn't want to though. So I had to wait.
Luckily my husband had been locked out from getting in the night before and jumped the fence leaving a car on the outside. So the next day we finally went and got the right ink!
LET THE PRINTING BEGIN!
If you read my last blog on how to make your own labels, then this will sound familiar.
I found these lovely awesome printable fabric at a craft store. I found them later on amazon. I think I found 3 packs of 12count for $45. They are normally around $20-$25 for 1 12 count. So I was thrilled! I only needed to use 15 though. If you want to use less pictures, you can just buy the 1 pack and use 12 pictures.
6. Sizing pictures on the computer
I sized and adjusted my pictures until they were all the same size. I made sure there was enough fabric on the outside to sew them to the other fabric pieces.
Then I printed them off and followed the instructions on the inside of the packet. Which is basically to print, let dry, peel paper off back of fabric, run under cold water to release excess ink, air dry.
7. Sew into sectioins
Then once your pictures are all done, you can finish sewing together the rest of your quilt. If you have ink, unlike I did, you can just sew everything together all at once. It is easiest to stitch them into small squares and then sew those all together. You can research quilts more though and see what other people say.
Now your beautiful wedding pictures combined with wedding guest well wishes and names.
Right
8. Making the binding
You can make your binding whenever, as it is the last part of your quilt that gets added on, but I made mine after I stitched all my pieces together. Click here to see the step by step video of how to make your binding and how to attach it.
I believe I only used a yard of fabric for this. I did the large strips 17"x 2.5" and the small strips 6"x 2.5". No idea why, I just thought it looked cool. The 2.5" has a reason though, as this is the width of your binding. I measured out enough to wrap around 85"x85" and added an extra 40" just to be safe because of the corners. This is what a correctly sewn binding looks like laid out flat.
Wrong
I was not a fan of angles. I just wanted to sew my binding together straight edge. However when you fold it over, it is bulky. So I huffed and I puffed, and I caved. I did it on the angle. One thing to keep in mind is PATIENCE. I undid my stitches several times because I would lay the angles together the wrong way. Then I would open it up, and it would look like this. GRRRR!!!! DO NOT STITCH THEM WITH THE ANGLE AND FABRIC LAYING WITH ALL THE LINES MATCHED UP! Learn from my mistake!!!
Make sure to watch her video to see what I am saying. I realized after that I didn't take a picture of how to lay them together properly. But she explains is amazingly. You'll notice however my angle won't be as big as hers, I hate wasting fabric and did mine a little different.
9. Fold binding in half
Once you have arrived at the very end of sewing all of your binding material together you fold it in half, and iron away!!! I like to spray mine with a water spray bottle. That way it sits tighter together in half.
Then roll it up until you need it.
10. Stitch in the ditch
I did mine a little backwards and sewed the binding on before I stitched in the ditch. I know that for next time though. You will want to baste your quilt by laying the backing face down on your work area, your batting in the middle and your front facing up. Then saftey pin it all together so it doesn't move around on you. Then you are ready to stitch in the ditch!
If you don't know what stitching in the ditch is, this video helps to explain it. Click here to watch that video.
To stitch in the ditch, basically means to sew along/on top of all of your seams. That gives it the nice tight feeling. A lot of people take theirs to be professionally done, and will also have stitch designs placed on their quilt. I chose not to because I didn't want designs all over the words and pictures.
***You'll notice that my binding is already on, whoops! So just make sure to stitch in the ditch before you bind it together.
11. Attaching your binding
To add the binding, lay the unfinished edge (the side that is not folded) lined up with the unfinished edge of your top. Sew a 1/4" in. Stop a 1/4" from the end to fold your corner and start the next side. Honestly watch the video I linked, I find it way easier to learn by watching someone else do it. Here it is one more time. When your binding is sewn on, fold your binding over to the other side and the seam is invisible!
12. Attach binding to the back
Then blind stitch your binding onto your backing. If you do not know how to blind stitch,
click here
to watch a tutorial.
THEN YOU ARE DONE!!! YAY you have a wonderful handmade keepsake that you did all by yourself!!!! It's not perfect, and I'm ok with that! It was my first quilt and I am quite happy with how it turned out!
