Perfect Piping: Covid Quilt Challenge #7

Well, we were at it again. I'm a week late in posting this one, but I tried to sneak in two projects again in one weekend and I didn't quite make it (too much pool time and not enough week night motivation).

This time, the technique that we were to use was piping (though maybe not perfectly as the title suggests). We also randomly selected a colour palette. This added an extra challenge since these were not necessarily colours we would normally pick together, and also trying to find fabric that fit in to the colour palette.

We started the same as always: with some skyping and some personal browsing. You had to remember to add the word "quilt" or "sewing" to your search of you ended up with a lot of delicious looking cupcakes. It was also interesting to think about how to maybe do piping in a non-traditional kind of way. After coming up with a few ideas and doing a bit of testing, we were off to the races.

I had a couple of ideas, but decided to start with my second one because although I liked my other idea a bit better, this one was more of a challenge, and I thought if I didn't start with it, I might never do it. It was triggered by the fact that cupcakes were what you ended up with in a google search for piping.

Coming up with the right order to do things in for this one in order to make it a 3 layer quilt was interesting. I started by creating a piped cupcake cup for the bottom. The piping was slightly angled and between each section of the cup, but in the end the angle wasn't that noticeable.

Next I outlined the sides and bottom of the cup with piping. Then I sewed that, right sides together, with the cupcake top, layered on top of some batting. I did things in this order so that I could pipe the edge of the bottom of the cupcake but not the top. I am very happy with this decision. Even on the bottom where I just had a couple of corners to turn, I had a bit of an issue with the seams catching (which I fixed by hand once things were together).

After putting the top together with the batting, I put it right sides together with the back and stitched most of the way around, leaving a little bit of a gap so that I could turn it right side out. This was a bit of a challenge because I couldn't really see exactly where my piping was to make sure I was lining things up well, but it turned out quite well. Once it was turned, I hand stitched it closed. My quilt was together and ready for quilting.

I started by quilting on either side of the piping on the bottom. I think this helped my piping stand up, as one of the issues with this challenge was that I didn't really have anything that you would use in piping at home. I ended up using yarn, which doesn't have the structure you might want in piping. After that I quilted some swirls in the icing to represent the icing piping that a cupcake might have. I was very happy with how it turned out.

Next I created a cherry for my cupcake. I created red piping (with the tiny scraps of cording that I did have laying around from the time I added piping to a pillow I made). Then I just wound that red piping, with the seam allowance, around itself and hand-stitched it together. I debating between having the clean side or the side with the loose threads showing. In the end I decided on the scraggly side up so I attached it that way, and I like it. It's a nice contrast to the neatness of the rest of the project.

The final step was to add the sprinkles. This was also how I got the other colours from the colour palette worked in as well (thanks to an embroidery thread loan from my friend — I traded for pool time). I made sure to stitch through nicely to both sides, so the sprinkles would look good either way.

I do have to confess that although I drew it to be 20" (the minimum of our projects), because of some of the seam allowances with the piping, it ended up measuring 19.5", so I guess I'm disqualified on this one.

My friend decided to go with her abstract artistic side on this one. She had some actual cording, but then had to figure out how to work that in to seams/binding (I didn't have that issue since my yarn was easily sewn over top of). She also had to get a little creative since she didn't have quite enough of the one fabric that she wanted.

She played with colours and angle nicely.

Squared it up.

And quilted it. She quilted on either side of the piping and continued that spacing/quilting below the piping as well. I really like the design she quilted in the grey space. (Though lots of loose ends to work in from the piping quilting.)

The binding was added, and it was complete!

 

In my second project I was also attempting to bring out my abstract artistic side. It was one of the first ideas I had when piping came up, but I was worried that it didn't highlight piping, just used it. However, now that it's complete I don't feel like that.

For this one I had to dig back in my covid quilt challenge skills and do some curved piecing. However, this was with the added challenge of putting piping in the seam as well. It turned out fairly well considering.

Once the piping was in place, the top was done. Or at least as done as it was going to get before I started the quilting. I added a red circle, which I stitched down with a free motion swirl. After that, it was just a matter of adding in lots of stitching. Some I did with the machine, some I did by hand. I also added in some yarn that I stitched down on top of the quilt. I was trying not to switch the machine thread too much, so I didn't do all the stitching in the order that might have made sense/made the designing go a little better.

I tried pick hand stitching that would look good on either side of the quilt, which made for some interesting stitching techniques.

I'm happy with all of it, though I do wish I had done something a little different in the grey section. It doesn't help that I don't really do embroidery work, so I just did a quick google and picked a few things that I thought might work okay on both sides.

I found a backing fabric that worked
nicely with the colour palette

The part that really hung me up with the piping with the binding. I debated about whether to do real piping in the binding or do a faux piping binding. I decided to go with the faux piping binding, and I think it would have gone okay if I hadn't read so many different instructions (I have this problem with recipes too). I accidentally attached the binding back to itself incorrectly, so you can see on the right side, there is a bit of bulkiness and things didn't actually properly line up. I also struggled with getting the corners lined up, but I'm not used to machine stitching both sides of the binding. It wasn't my favourite technique, and though I like the look it gave, I'm not sure I would rush out to do it again.