Fabric bolts - about 1/3 done

Yesterday was pretty much a mini loss but definitely a major gain as I spend the better part of the day following great-nephew, Matt Dunstone's, progress as he led his rink to the Manitoba Junior Men's Curling Championship!!!!!!! Now on to the Canadian championship in Fort MacMurray......

The games weren't televised but, thanks to curlmanitoba.org , Mom, DS Shirley and I were able to follow the games closely as the results were posted end by end. So I was checking the website every 15 minutes or so then calling my Mom with the updates. The semi-final went back and forth and we were so relieved when Matt's rink won that.

Well, I'll tell you, if we thought the semi-final was a cliff-hanger, the final was even more so! They were tied at the end of the 10th regulation end, blanked the 11th end, and finally scored 1 in the 12th end for the win! Mom had a doctor's appointment during the last couple ends and when I called to tell her and DS Shirley that it was tied at the end of the 10th, Mom said she just hoped that they wouldn't take her blood pressure!

First thing this morning, I headed to Canadian Tire where I picked up two 5-packs of KIS 6L shoeboxes  (on sale in the flyer for $5.00 per 5 pack) and some new blades for my utility knife. They had the new version of my favourite knife on sale for $4.00 (regular $9.99) so I picked one up even though it hasn't been getting great reviews. I haven't really used it yet but I can tell right off the bat the handle is about twice as thick as my original one. I'll have to work with it and see how it feels. (Even remembered to pick up more batteries for my camera - although unfortunately that just keeps it working - doesn't improve the picture quality VBG)

Got home and made some condo business phone calls then decided I had to get some mini work in place to work on at our condo craft club (more familiarly known as 'Stitch and Bitch' LOL).

I had already decided that the pieces of fabric for the bolts would be 4" x 3.75" (four feet of 45" fabric) and that I would also cut matching pieces for fat quarters. But I would make the pieces for the fat quarters 1 1/2" x 1". That's only half the size of a RL fat quarter but sort of allows for the thickness of the fabric.

My first step was to make templates for those sizes in a Word document and print them out.

Then I took several pieces of the fabric that I had chosen for the bolts, ironed them, and stacked about 8 of them together.

I placed the larger template on the fabric (on the cutting mat) and held it in place with fabric weights. I moved the weights to the side to make room for my 6" stainless steel ruler as a guide as I used my wonderful new rotary cutter to cut the fabric to size. After I cut the larger pieces, I put the smaller template along one of the straight edges and cut the fabric for the fat quarters.

I know that the 'proper' way that fabric is wrapped on a bolt is folded in half. BUT especially since I'm cutting these pieces in stacks of about 8 pieces, I'm going to have pieces that have loose threads so what I chose to do was fold the fabric so that two of the cut edges were on the inside.

With the fabric 4" wide and 3.75" high, fold 1/4 of the fabric down and press in place, then fold the lower piece up to meet the top folded down piece. This gives the equivalent of a piece of 45" wide fabric folded in half.

Here's the first set of fabric cut, folded and pressed:

 I already made a bunch of bolts for the fabric.

I spread Weldbond glue on half of one length of the styrofoam bolt and attached one end of the fabric.

Then I used a large binder clip to hold it in place while the glue dried.

When the glue had dried, I wrapped the fabric around the styrofoam and glued the end in place.

I found the end of the fabric stayed in place better if I first glued inside the folds, then glued the fabric to itself. Once the fabric was wrapped and glued to itself, I blinder-clipped it in place until the glue dried.

The first nine bolts of fabric.

This is a great plastic cabinet with moveable shelves that I have. It's not the one I'll use in the finished quilt shop but it's great as a display piece.

I had worked with nine binder clamps from the beginning. And that worked well. By the time I ready to wrap the fabric around the styrofoam and glue the end in place, the original glue had dried. But I found that the fabric had a tendency to spread a bit as I wrapped it...

SO later, I glued the folded fabric to itself at one end (moving that from the second last step to the first) then glued the other end to the bolt and clamped it. Then I wrapped the fabric around the bolt and glued the fabric in place.

When all the fabric bolts are completed, I'll spend more time organizing them by colour and  design.

It took about six hours to make 33 fabric bolts - and I'll want to have at least 100! On the other hand, these things are always a learning experience and the next 67 will probably only take about that much time.

But then I'll have to make the fat quarters! They're really going to be a challenge in the folding and ironing!!

Even though I have the book on Jelly Rolls in the book section, am not too sure how I'm going to handle that !!! Although maybe a couple of those could be managed with strips of narrow ribbon....have to think about that.