Bomber Command quilt

This was an unusual project for me. It had been partially quilted on a domestic sewing machine when it got to me. But Bev decided that it needed something extra in the outer borders. She asked me to give it "my touch", because she wanted it to be a very special quilt. It is for a veteran who volunteers at the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton, AB.

Here you can see a rope motif in the yellow border. Serpentine in the blue border. And swirls with hooks in the red border. This project was difficult to carry off, because of the pre-existing quilting. Be sure to scroll down for some notes about how I finagled it!

Here you can see the white batting that came already quilted with the top and the backing fabric. Unfortunately there was only a couple inches of extra backing fabric on each side of the quilt. Since I mount quilts on a longarm quilting frame, I need at least 4" of backing fabric at the top and bottom of the quilt top. So, in this case, I worked around that by adding "leaders". I used 6" strips of scrap fabric and sewed them to the top and bottom edges of the backing fabric. I actually used the long sides of the quilt to mount to my frame, so that's what I'm calling the "top" and "bottom" of this quilt. Click here to read a past blog post with more information about leaders and seaming on backing fabric.

Here you can see that there were only a couple inches of backing fabric. And you can see the purple leader, and it's attached to my quilting frame.

This is the side of the quilt, while on my frame. I use long wooden clamps on the quilt sides to keep it gently spread taut while I'm quilting it. That's why I need an extra 4" of backing fabric on each side of the quilt top. Even more than 4" is great, but I was able to make it work with only a couple inches on this one.

All's well that ends well - and I think this project turned out really great! Thanks for letting me be involved, Bev!