Scrappy Quilted Wall Hanging

I just finished my Spokes quilted wall hanging today. This is a fab way to use up all those little scraps that you hate to throw away but seem far too small to do anything useful with.

The blocks remind me of the spokes of a bike, or even fireworks.

Fabric Choices

These blocks are made with small scraps so you really don’t need much fabric at all. I used 2-3 fabrics in each block which made the requirements for each fabric even less.

Because they are such small pieces it’s important to choose solids or small scaled prints. If you have a large scale print it would still be useable. I’d just cut all the pieces from a similar place on the fabric (you might need a bigger bit of fabric to do this). I’m already dreaming of a Liberty of London version of this – they have some really darling small scale prints.

For my background I chose a range of light tans/beiges that all worked together.

With my scraps I decided to go with a colour wheel layout and each block would contain only one colour. I had so much fun going through my scrap bags and finding fabrics. I could have easily made several different blocks from each colour.

That Centre Block

So I’d decided on a colour wheel layout in a 3 x 3 block formation. I had the colour wheel progressing around the outside of the wall hanging, which left the middle square. The question was should I go with white in the centre:

Or maybe black/grey:

Or make it multi coloured, with eight sectors each reflecting the closest colour?

In the end, I decided I liked the black/grey block the most. The white/low volume block looked a little washed out and the multi coloured block looked too busy.

Quilting the Wall Hanging

This was the part I was really looking forward to – the straight line quilting!

The quilting serves 3 purposes to me: texture, fixing and structure.

Texture is straight forward – it’s a quilted wall hanging that needs to have to great quilting to add another design element. If I was a talented free motion quilter I would love to quilt in some fireworks-type designs. But I’m not, so I stuck with what I know – a good, dense cross hatch.

The other good thing about dense quilting is that it serves to fix down all those little appliqué pieces. My cross hatching lines are half an inch apart and every appliqué piece has two lines of stitching crossing it. This will make sure the pieces stay where they are meant to stay.

Structure refers to the structure of the wall hanging. We all love soft drape when it comes to a quilt to snuggle under on the couch. But when you are using a patchwork panel as a quilted wall hanging it helps to give it structure so it stays nice and square on the wall. You really don’t want it draping and sagging once it’s hung. (This is the same for cushion panels for me – I like them to be really stiff with quilting so they have a better chance of surviving my children’s antics.)

Other ways to add more structure to your wall hanging is to use a firmer polyester batting and to use a stiffer fabric for your backing. I used a canvas-like fabric for my backing which added some extra structure.

Quilting How-To

I used my quilting ruler and a hera marker* to mark my cross hatch pattern before quilting. Here’s my process in case you’re interested. You can also find more information on straight line quilting in this blog post I wrote over here.

I began with marking the centre diagonal in one direction and then marked one inch lines out from there.

I sewed all those lines first, making sure to start each line from the same side of the quilt. I find that sewing them all in the same direction prevents the fabric from buckling (or forming little waves) in between the stitching lines. The easiest way to facilitate this is to draw a pencil arrow on the batting so you don’t forget which side to start from.

Once I’d finished all the one inch lines in one direction I then used the same process to do the perpendicular lines. Once they’re sewn you have a one inch grid. You could stop here if you like, but I do like to make sure the appliqué is well and truly secured. So I recommend adding a line in between every line of stitching to take it to a half-inch grid.

I used a ruler to mark the first few half-inch lines but then gave it up. My walking foot is very close to an inch wide so it was easier to just line it up between the stitching lines and sew right down the middle. You mileage may vary depending on your walking foot!

Finally, I had 3 quilting threads to choose from – light beige, tan and grey. I ended up using the tan and grey (middle and right, below). I sewed the one inch grid with tan and then switched to grey to fill in the half-inch lines.

Binding

The first decision I had to make here was did I actually want a binding, or did I want to give it a pillowcase finish. Or use a facing (the last two would give a clean edge rather than a border). I decided that I did want a binding, but I didn’t want it to be a hard frame (ie a dark colour).

Initially I was going to use one of the background fabrics for binding. But then my husband said, why not use white. I thought, oh no, white would be too harsh, but then I thought a white print could be an option (so thanks to the Mr.) I chose a Carolyn Friedlander print which has a white background with grey and silver metallic cross hatching. I really like how the binding mimics the quilting cross hatch.

So don’t pooh-pooh your non-quilting partner’s suggestions – they have good advice to offer!

That’s all folks…

There you have it – my latest sewing project. I hope you’ve enjoyed walking through this process with me. I will eventually get this quilted wall hanging into a pattern with all the measurements and layout templates so you can replicate it too.

I will enjoy these pops of colour in my kitchen in the meantime!

Cheers,

Kirsty

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