Finishing a prairie point edge

I finished the quilting on the swap quilt earlier this week.  Yay!

Now I am finishing up the prairie point edge, sewing the backing fabric to the back of the prairie points.  I took pictures to show the process, because I don’t think I did a very good job explaining to Mom on the phone last night.

Update 30 January 2015: For a more detailed explanation of finishing a prairie point edge, as well as information on planning, folding and attaching points, see my new Prairie Point Tutorial Series


First, sew the prairie points to the front of the quilt before you quilt it.  Stop any quilting about an inch away from the edge of the quilt.  I questioned that suggestion, but I’m glad I followed it because now that I’m finishing the back I see that you need that unquilted space to maneuver.



Once the quilting is done, trim the backing fabric about half an inch larger than the raw edge of the quilt top (you could do less, but I like having more turn-under to work with).
Trim the batting a quarter inch smaller than the raw edge of the quilt top.






Flip the prairie points out away from the quilt.  The batting will tuck under the seam allowance.








Fold the edge of the backing fabric so the fold just covers the seam line on the prairie points.  Pin and hand stitch to the prairie points.








Here’s the back. Getting the corner of the backing nice and pointy and not visible from the front of the quilt was fiddly. If anyone has any tips on how to do it I’m open to suggestions.







Here’s the front.  Only one more side to stitch and the quilt will be finished!








And here’s a peek at my incentive to finish the swap quilt today:


These were on sale today and I’m allowed to play with them as soon as the swap quilt is done.

Progress

Every day this week I've woken up thinking this would be the day I'd have time to get things done in the sewing department, and every day it hasn't happened.  When there's no milk or veggies left in the fridge it's time to do groceries, and when there are no more clean socks, that's my cue to get around to laundry.  Let’s not talk about the state of the bathroom...and will you look at the time, it's time to run to school and collect the kids...  In a nutshell, the things I was waiting to finish before writing a post aren't done.
However, I did make progress on various projects last weekend.  First up, the socks. I finished them Sunday night and they’ve been worn to school already.  I could probably have made them a touch longer in the foot.  I’ll know for the next pair.  They really were not as difficult to knit as I’d imagined.  I’d always heard about the dreaded “turning the heel”, but the pattern instructions were very clear and easy to follow.  Isn’t the internet great?
Next up, remember this quilt? It has been waiting a while for the promised borders and prairie points.

i I It acquired 3-inch borders on the weekend but is still waiting for the points.  I used the method that yields a continuous string of prairie points instead of having to make and place each one individually.  I was quite pleased with my string of points.

These are made from 3” squares.  They looked great on their own, but I’m glad I set this strip on the quilt before making the strips for the remaining three sides.  The scale was all wrong!


It looks like little saw teeth or a pinked edge, not quite what I envisioned.  After a moment or two of dejection, I regrouped and cut a few squares to audition point sizes, which I suppose I should have done in the first place!  I settled on points made from 4-inch squares.  I also decided that with the continuous prairie points method the points end up overlapping more than I like for this particular quilt, so I’m making the 100 points individually after all so that I can adjust the overlap.  I’m glad I had enough fabric left to start over in a new size.
Once the points are on (hopefully tomorrow?) this quilt will be ready to baste and quilt.  I want to machine quilt it, so I need to practice.  I know I’ve said that before, but really, I’ve now taken concrete steps towards practicing. Here’s the last project I completed on the weekend:

I cut a stack of batting and fabric to make practice quilt sandwiches.  Now I can’t use the excuse that I don’t have sandwich fixings to grab when I have 10 spare minutes to practice.  Yup, I’ll be practicing any minute now, if I can just pull myself away from blogs…
One last thing.  Last night I just needed to FINISH something, so I made a cute little wallet from a pattern I got for my birthday.  This only took about 30 minutes to make. It still needs a snap closure, which I didn’t have on hand, but I’m counting it as a finish anyway.

Prairie points

I started making prairie points for this quilt top that has been waiting its turn for about  a year now. 

I cut out paper squares of various sizes and folded them to audition sizes, then cut 86 4-inch squares out of 14 fabrics leftover from making the leaves. The squares are folded twice on the diagonal to make tidy little triangles.

Next I started to lay them out along the edge of the quilt.

Next, thunderstorms came rolling through again. It was the 3rd night in a row, and they go on for hours, and after 7 years in the Midwest they still wake me up. I'm getting a bit cranky from reduced sleep... Anyway,  I didn't want to leave my machine plugged in during the storms so the points didn't actually get sewn to the quilt.  They got picked up and put away so the kids could curl up down here if the storms turned severe. 

For those of you not in the Midwest, severe refers to damaging winds and/or hail.  Last night's storms weren't "severe" but coupled with the previous two nights of heavy rainfall they caused two rivers to overflow their banks and cause record flooding in parts of town.  Happily we're OK where we are, though currently we have no running water (the kids looked at me very srangely when I told them not to flush the toilets...)

So easy cooking tonight - sandwiches and whatever doesn't create dishes to wash :)  And as long as the power stays on to keep the A/C running to keep the heat at bay (105 F/41 C with the humidity factored in) I can keep quilting. There aren't supposed to be any storms tonight...