New Postcards & Importance of Blocking

Here are a few of the postcards I have been experimenting with lately. They are all a small "window" snapshot of another larger drawing from a Dover copywrite free coloring book. I made a window in a piece of cardstock and moved the window around the coloring book page until I found an image that appealed to me. Then I traced the image onto tracing paper, scanned it, enlarged it to 4.5x6.5" and then traced the enlargement onto white muslin with a pigma pen after I had applied fusible web to the back of the muslin. The fusible web made the muslin stable enough to draw on.

The entire piece is fused to Peltex. The color is all from colored pencil. I brushed textile medium over the color and let it dry, then added thread painting on a few of them. Then I applied a piece of muslin to the back of the card using fusible web, trimmed the card to 4x6" and finished the edges with a satin stitch.

I'll post a few more in the future.

The Importance of Blocking a Quilt

I was asked a question about the importance of blocking a quilt for the long-run. In all honesty, I don't know if blocking prolongs the life of a quilt. I personally only block quilts that are wall-hangings or show quilts. That is because they will hang flat and straight and just look better. A blocked quilt will remain square and flat until it gets wet again. If you wet your quilt for any reason, you'll have to reblock it to get it flat and square once again.

With show quilts it's almost a must. Judges will check that your quilt hangs straight and true and lies flat on a table. Unless your piecing is perfect, your quilt top perfectly square, and your quilting even throughout the quilt, most likely it won't lie flat or hang straight.

Judges also look for "square". You have to trim your quilt so that it has perfectly square corners and that when the edges are pulled together to the center of the quilt, they match up perfectly. That is hard to do unless you block the quilt first. If you don't block, when you trim the quilt to square it up, you'll either trim off too much of your design and it looks "wonky" or your edges won't match up perfectly. Blocking will make the design square up nicely.

Another benefit of blocking is that the binding goes on easier and looks smoother. You can get those perfect mitered corners a lot easier if the quilt is blocked.

So in summary, if you are entering your quilt in a show - block it. If you are making a wall-hanging - block it. If you are making a quilt to use on a bed or for a child to drag around the house - don't worry about blocking.