Moving tape for... quilting? Tote Part 1

Tonight, I embarked on yet another new sewing project - a quilted tote bag/purse. My good friend Stephanie made one this morning before my very eyes..... and I was impressed. Impressed enough to copy her! I really appreciated her help and instruction; she got me excited about quilting and made it look so easy. She's slick like that. I came home and decided to make a tote for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I'll take you through it step by step.

After ironing my fabric, I cut four rectangles the same size. Actual dimensions don't really matter, but it needs to be large enough to hold a wallet and a few other things. I cut two rectangles of two different materials. Then I cut two pieces of batting the same size as my fabric. I can now make a quilt sandwich: layer my materials wrong side up, batting, right side up.


I had to use two pieces of batting. I'm hoping it doesn't make my quilting too lumpy.

Well. Lumpier than it will already be. I have lump issues.

Okay. After the layering, I pinned all the way around the edges, smoothing the material as I went to try to eliminate lumpy shenanigans. Then, things got a bit wacky.

See, at 2am this morning, my daughter woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep. During the hours of 2 and 5 am, I spent a lot of time clicking around the internet. I was researching quilting and looking for tips and tricks. Tonight, I realized that without some ingenious thinking, I would be at a standstill. My fabric pencils were worn down and we don't have a pencil sharpener. The fabric pen I swiped from my mother's house is out of ink. I was using my kids' sidewalk chalk but it's so bulky and doesn't give a precise line. Then all that internet clicking at 3:30 in the morning paid off!

Someone, somewhere posted that she used painter's tape to mark her quilting lines. Painter's tape is two inches across so it would work as a great guide.

I pulled out my handy, dandy moving tape gun and got to work.



It worked pretty well! It wasn't as easy to stay precise and straight as marking with pencil would have been, but desperate times and all that...

It was easy to pull the tape off and it provided a decent guide. But I'll still be heading to the store tomorrow to get a pencil sharpener and some more pens.

Here's the finished quilting. It's almost midnight and I'm sure my daughter will be waking me up in a few hours so I'll do the other fabric sandwich tomorrow.