Quilting (Fiber Arts)          

Welcome to Buttons & Batter's Quilting Projects Page.

October ~ Our First Meeting.... Machine Quilting demo. Bring all your sewing supplies (as listed below) and one block sandwich - front, back scrap fabric plus batting for one block (making a sandwich), Size 11" square!

Read Ahead: Check out our Lap Blanket project below, so you can bring all your questions to this meeting, and be ready as you will be doing most of the work for it on your own.

November ~ Lap Blanket Project. We will use the Frayed Edge technique for this quilt. New Supply: You may want to get rubber finger tips, sold at any office supply store (WalMart too), at least 3 for each hand. Try them on for size, they need to be tight. Or you can ware tight rubber gloves instead. This really helps you to control your blocks as you machine quilt them!

December ~ Log Cabin Quilt Projects for Fair. Instructions

January ~Work on cutting strips, and sewing blocks for log cabin.

February ~Bring your completed blocks to the meeting and we will go over how to put them together.

March ~Finish up your quilt top, and plan your batting & backing.

April ~

May ~

June ~

Member's   Supplies   List

• Sewing Basket Containing:  
  1. scissors
  2. measuring tape
  3. seem ripper
  4. straight-pins with large, colored heads
  5. sewing thread, black, white and color matching one's material


• Sewing Machine



• Project Material(s) - see project instructions



• A Printed Copy of current project instructions for each meeting.



• Rotary Cutter and Mat

Do The Math

• Calculate the amount of material you need for a quilt
  
  1. Take the finished size of your quilt, say 4' x 5', now convert into inches
  2. 4(12')=48" and 5(12")=60", multiply 48" x 60" to get square inches of 2,880 for your entire quilt top.
  3. Lets say you are going to have 6- 12" blocks, multiply 12"x12" for 144" square inches per-block and multiply by how many blocks total 144"(6)=864" square inches for all blocks.
  4. If you subtract 864 sq" from your total of 2,880 sq" you will have 2,016 which is the square inches for your lattice (or non-block material).


• Applying these numbers to material sold by the yard


1. Material is usually 42" wide, one yard is 36", so converting to sq" we get 42(36)=1,512 sq"
2. Now if we divided our lattice by material - 2,016sq" ÷ 1,512sq" = we get 1.333 or 1 1/3 yards of material needed. I've been told to add a yard to this to cover binding, this is true for a full size top, but to much for anything smaller - so approximate for smaller projects.
3. Doing the same for our blocks we get 867sq" ÷ 1,512sq" = .5734 of a yard. Now multiply 36"(36 is one yard)x .5734 and you get about 21" or a little less than 3/4 of a yard for making your blocks.


• What have we learned: First always convert everything into square inches (sq") even the material being purchased. Next, calculate pieces that will use the same material, such as lattice. And finally use division and decimal to fraction conversion to figure out yardage. It's important to have basic equivalents of fractions and decimals in your head. With simple adding, multiplying, dividing and converting you can calculate your needed materials too.