Zuckerwatte Quilt & Curved Bindings!

This tutorial is being written as an extension of a Quilt pattern that recently appeared in the September 2011 Patchwork Gilde Magazine in Germany! Remember I showed you the back of this quilt?

I was unable to show you the FRONT until it appeared in the magazine! And the Magazine is HERE!

Zuckerwatte is the German name for Cotton Candy, and this quilt, with its pinks and purples just have a Zuckerwatte feel to me! Are you surprised that there are more STRINGS in this quilt? I’ve been on a bender to use as many strings as I can in as many different ways that I can this year!

You can find the pattern in the Patchwork Gilde Magazine! It’s the September 2011 issue, and it just arrived in my hot little hands this week! Yummy!!

Along with the pattern for the quilt, is an article/interview from my workshop at Nadel und Faden in Stuttgart!

I have such fond memories of being in Germany!! I wish I could read the text---but it is all in German! But look close at the right hand page….do you see what the underlay image is?

It’s a very very light wallpaper effect of my traveling hexagon quilt! Yep, that went to Germany with me too! ((If this quilt could talk ---huh?))

If you would like to win a copy of Patchwork Gilde Magazine, leave a comment below and I will be drawing 2 winners!! Let’s leave this open for a while. I’m leaving on a cruise and I won’t be back until the 13th to draw --- but we will draw when I get home!

Now..the whole reason why this post is here --- there wasn’t room in the magazine to do the whole tutorial on the curved binding. And it is directing people to my website to find the tutorial! And I need to get it up here-----

Adding Gently Curved Bindings!!

The first thing you need to do is hop over to the Cutting Bias Bindings Tutorial to get your bias binding ready!

After quilting, stay stitch close to the edge of the outer border and trim the excess batting and backing away.Do not cut your curves yet! We'll mark the border, draw some lines, use the lines to place our binding, and trim later ----

Paper Templates!

I know there are many “tools” out there for getting even scallops, but all I need is a small plate and some extra paper!

Corner Template!

This is the first template we need to make, and because our borders were cut 5.5” before adding them to the quilt, we can do this out of a 6 1/4” square! If your border is wider or narrower than this, adjust the size of the square as necessary.

Start with a 6 1/4” square and fold it in half. Find a plate/saucer that will fit in the corner and give you the size of corner curve you would like…I just hit my china cabinet to come up this one. Lay the plate, pot lid, circle in the corner over the fold and draw a partial circle.

Decide “HOW” shallow your scallops are going to be….the shallower they are the easier they are to bind without cupping.

I wanted my scallops to be less than one inch deep and used that measurement to extend the line from my partially traced plate curve out to the edge of my square. Fold the square back in half, and cut out your corner template…..then snip a little 1 1/4” square out of the bottom corner of the paper square. This is where your template will line up on your inner border…

This is how your paper will lay in the corner! You can adjust it as needed by refolding and trimming as desired.

Side Template!

Cut a 5” X 6.5” rectangle from scrap paper. Fold it in half. Using your plate, draw a gently curved edge at the top of the paper, and extend your shallow curved lines to the edges, wherever you think you would like your depth to be. Fold the paper back in half, and cut on the line. These are my two paper templates. You can see where I corrected that too-deep line on the corner by folding and trimming! Because the corner and the side piece are separate from each other, we can fudge the distance between scallops as needed when we draw the lines on the quilt border!

I know I’ll be using these again, so I went and cut them out of left over template plastic! My first line wasn’t quite round enough and my corner piece was corrected when I trimmed. You can do it!

Using chalk, a blue marker, or a pigma pen ---Yes, I used a pigma pen!!--- Trace your corners on to your quilt, and then using the side template, trace your curves on each border, adjusting the template to fit by sliding it closer together or farther apart as needed. This is very forgiving! If you want, you can start at both ends and work toward the center of each border length to keep things more symmetrical.

Starting at the TOP of a scallop, part way down one quilt side, lay the folded bias binding with raw edges up against your drawn line. Start sewing, leaving about 4” of tail on your binding unsewn behind the presser foot. We’ll fix that later!

I use my regular presser foot to do this…the quilt is already quilted well, and my walking foot obscures my view for sewing a 1/4” binding. Stitch slowly, and try not to stretch the binding around the curves as you go. Think only a few inches ahead of where you are. Deal with each curve as you get there. You might have to lower and raise your presser foot to readjust the binding to fit easily around the curves. Don’t race! Take your time…it’s worth it!

Here is a whole length of binding attached to the quilt, and the edges will be trimmed later!

Continue around the whole quilt until you reach a few inches from where you began. To join the ends of your binding, follow my directions on my straight edge binding tutorial HERE! You’ll have a nice invisible join with no lumps or bumps!

Here is the binding, with the quilt edge trimmed 1/4” from the seam line! I’m ready to begin the handwork of stitching it down!

I bind my quilts using the “ladder stitch” --- making the stitches completely invisble when finished! To do the ladder stitch, take a small side-ways stitch in the fold of the binding. Directly below where the thread exits the binding, take a small side ways stitch just below the machine stitching line. Move the needle back up directly above where the needle exited the quilt backing, and do another side ways stitch hidden in the fold of the binding.

Ladder Stitch:

You’ll notice that the quilt backing is facing me…and my fingers roll the binding down and over the edge of the quilt. I don’t even use those “hair clip” binding clips or pins!, I don’t NEED them….My fingers do the work for me! Pins and hair clips are just one more thing for me to lose ;c)

Zuckerwatte will be making its appearance in ENGLISH as a feature in my next book due out in July 2012. Copies of Patchwork Gilde are available across Germany, perhaps you can find someone who can pick you up a copy!

Or, you can leave a comment below to win one of two free Giveaway copies! I’ll draw for them upon my return from the cruise with Pat Sloan ---but give me a couple days to rest up, I think I’m going to need it!