"Cotton Theory Quilting" ~ Food For Thought

I'm joining

Food for Thought

the brainchild of the very talented Jain from

Once in a Blue Moon

and editor of

Food With Style.

(click the book to access it on Amazon.com)

I have been reading the book

Cotton Theory Quilting, Book #1

by
Betty Cotton
*****

It is an excellent book with very clear, concise directions,
which work perfectly IF you read & follow them! Go figure!

I made this reversible & fully quilted (during assembly)
small tablerunner for the outside table in the Gazebo
where I served a big luncheon salad & these tiny blossom pies.

They come in both Cherry & Apple Caramel & are both delicious!

They are made by Chudleighs


The apple caramel is available now at Sam's Club, Wal-mart
& some grocery stores.
The cherry has been discontinued &
I sure wish they would
consider bringing it back.




I'm taking a little liberty & stretching the boundaries of Jain's FFT guidelines
with this post, since there isn't any food mentioned in this book...only quilting!
So I had to show you the food that I served with the quilted items.

I have been wanting to try "The Cotton Theory" quilting for YEARS!
I met Betty Cotton first at an Embroidery Expo in Tampa &
then again at the Houston Quilt Show the following year.

I've watched her demonstrate her unusual technique of
quilting a project as you assemble the blocks,
making it much easier to complete at home.
No need to struggle to manipulate a big quilt under
the throat of a normal size machine.

My sewing & tennis friend, Anne came over last week
& together, we finally mastered "The Cotton Theory"
...almost!
(I'll explain later)

I used the embroidery mode
of my machine to do some quilted feather patterns on 3 rectangles
of cute black, white & red cherry fabrics.





This particular design is from a CD by Anita Goodesign
& is specifically made to resemble the look of quilting
instead of embroidery.

I used a different design from that same CD on my
country French tablerunner



made via the 'Tube Quilting' method.

explained here



This is what the design looks like on the reverse side.
It doesn't show up very well on the checks.
I should have thought of that ahead of time
but this was just going to be a practice project.
Who knew it would turn out so cute?!


Basically, the "Cotton Theory" has you leaving a 1" space or
border of both your top & bottom fabrics all
around your quilting squares WITHOUT batting
in that 1" perimeter.

You sew the blocks together using a large 1" seam allowance.
Then the seam allowances are folded over themselves &
stitched down with decorative stitches.



Here you can see the machine feather stitch I used.




The only problem was that Anne & I were turning the seam
allowances towards the WRONG direction!

They are supposed to fold inward towards
each other & you need only
one line of fancy stitches to catch both sides
on the same pass.

We decided after we finished that we liked our way better!
Its more decorative & it also gives the project more quilting.

I made a set of 4 matching napkins to go along with
the small sized tablerunner.

I found the directions for using the backing fabric to
wrap around to the front AND form the mitered corners
at the same time
HERE.

I think they fit the Gazebo table beautifully &
used them in a lunch outside last week.

I wish all of you could have joined us for some pie!


Thanks for stopping by the Gazebo House.

Jain, I know this isn't our usual fare for
the Food For Thought meme
but its the only book I've finished reading this week!

I'm in the middle of Diane Mott Davidson's

Sweet Revenge


Another *culinary mystery*
so there should be LOTS of treats to share next time.

Oh & if any of you would like to see more of how you do this
'quilt as you sew' method,
you can watch this video!

EDIT TO ADD:

Per Lori's question about needing an expensive sewing machine to do this with...not really.

The little quilt shown below was mostly done with straight stitches.

All the colored straight pieced blocks could be done on an antique Featherweight machine.

Simple straight stitches.



The little embroidered blocks, although done with a machine embroidery here, of course, could be done by hand.



These blocks were assembled by my friend Anne, with the quilt as you sew method, too.

fondly,