Ride 'Em Cowboy - Shirt - Part III

Progress!

Now that school is officially out, and all the required end of the school year events are done, I am now free to sew more and settle back into life without a full time job. Not that I won't be busy, I still have the house and children to take care of, plus my alterations clients, and the rest of the sewing.

Today was a bit odd in that I've been busy trying to catch up on cleaning and shopping since we took the day off on Saturday and went to a local amusement park as a family. I was able to get the back yoke of the shirt quilted, and in the next few days, I should have the rest of the shirt pieces quilted and ready for the hand embroidery.

Here's the quilting process:

First, the pattern piece is traced onto the fabric to be quilted. A center line is drawn, so that all the quilting can start from a central point. The actual stitching line is marked at the center, and two lines will start from that point, one diagonally to the left and one diagonally to the right. In the photo below, you can see the curved edge of the back neck, and a white dot below it. The white dot is the actual stitching line at the center of the piece.

By using a protractor, I mark lines at a 45 degree angle to the center line. These lines are 1/2" (1cm) apart. I wanted them to be close because of the small scale of the garment. A larger garment might have lines further apart. I've only marked the lines for one direction at the moment. I stitch all of the lines in one direction before stitching the lines in the other direction.


Once the lines are marked, I started the quilting stitching. The first set of lines, every other line, is stitched with a single needle. The piece was then pressed. It is pressed after every set of stitching. I used the flash for this photo, so the lines are not very visible,but they are done.


The lines that were not quilted the first time (every other line) were then quilted with a twin needle. Once all the lines in the other direction are quilted, the piece will have plaid-like quilting.

After all the lines in the first direction were stitched, the lines for the other direction are drawn onto the fabric and the other lines are stitched. I started with the double needle lines since the machine was already set up for double needle stitching. The photo below shows the quilting almost done, just lacking the last lines of single needle stitching.

After the stitching is complete, the piece is pressed well and compared the original pattern piece. The more quilting in a piece, the more it shrinks, so it must be compared to the original pattern piece if it is to fit properly. Once the pattern piece was retraced, I stitched all along the traced outline with a short stitch. This is best seen from the back of the piece:

The piece is then trimmed and is ready for the next embellishments. I left a small margin on this piece as I know it will get a lot of handling as I will be hand embroidering and hand appliquéing. That little bit of margin also gives me a chance to make sure the piece is exactly straight. At this point it isn't - the quilting is a bit off the center line. I can fix that with some careful measuring and marking before the piece is stitched to the back.


This evening I hope to trace off a pattern for my winter coat, work on some fabric postcards and work on my latest button. I've changed my mind about the pattern and I hope to have enough fabric for this other coat! I'll show you tomorrow, if not it's back to the original plan.

Parting Shots. Flowers, lots of flowers. The first set of flowers are some roses from my husband as a thoughtful gift at the end of a very long school year. Aren't those striped ones cool? He said they were a new variety available as a cut flower. The second bouquet of flowers was presented to me at the end of the Graduation Banquet that I was in charge of decorating for and making sure everything ran smoothly and on time the night of the banquet.