Thursday, December 4, 2014

Kona Skinny Strips ~ Baby and Toddler Quilt

Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts

The team at Robert Kaufman Fabrics kindly sent me a number of different size pre-cuts of my Designer Palette (Rita Hodge) ~ Kona Solids including a Skinny Strips pre-cut bundle. Skinny Strips pre-cuts are just like Jelly Rolls but rather than strips that measure 2.5 inches wide the strips are only 1.5 inches wide (by the full width of the fabric); perfect for sashing, inner borders and strip piecing. 

Robert Kaufman Skinny Strips pre-cut in Rita Hodge Designer Palette.

My work and experience with Jelly Rolls is limited and I haven't previously seen a Skinny Strips pre-cut but I was curious to see more ... so I peeled off the label ... unfurled the strips ... only to then realize that there was no putting it back together again. The only thing to do was make something! Which I did, right then and there.

Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts
Skinny Strips ~ Baby and Toddler Quilt
34 inches x 43 inches
When sewing long strips of fabric together there is a tendency for the piece to curve or bow, and then it simply will not lie flat. One way to avoid this is to alternate the sewing direction of the strips. For example, with this quilt top I first pieced the strips into pairs sewing from the top down, then pieced the pairs of strips together by sewing from the bottom up. Skinny Strips are  also precision cut (and the strips were cut remarkably on-grain) which eliminates inaccuracy as a result of rotary cutting the full width of fabric. All you need is a constant width seam.

Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts
Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts
Kona Skinny Strips Quilt - quilting detail | Red Pepper Quilts

I then went a little crazy with the quilting, stitching 5 vertical lines for every one inch wide strip and for the full width of the quilt, matching the top thread with each of the Kona colors. This I love to do! It's very labor intensive but the texture created by the closely spaced quilting lines is amazing, and worth every color change, every bobbin change, and every stitch.

Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts
Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts

For the back of the quilt I have used a text fabric from the Love Notes collection by Echo Park for Andover Fabrics; I rather like that the colors of the larger size words match the colors of the quilt top. You can also see that for the quilting I matched the lower/bobbin thread to blend with the quilt backing fabric. Quilting with different top and and bobbin thread colors poses no problems provided your sewing machine tension is well balanced. My machine was having a good day!

Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts

This quilt is for sale and is now listed in my Etsy Store.

See the listing details here: 

Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts
Binding ~ Kona Cotton in Pepper 
Ready for shipping.

Kona Skinny Strips Baby and Toddler Quilt | Red Pepper Quilts

I loved working on this project! More work with solid fabric is definitely part of the plan for 2015. 

Thank you for stopping by,
Rita

RELEVANT LINKS:
Red Pepper Quilts Etsy Store
Rita Hodge Kona Designer Palette
More RPQ projects with Kona Cotton

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