After the last weighted quilt update, I went straight into sewing the two quilt layers together following the lines I had taped out on the quilt top. Only to either sew on the wrong side of the tape or find I had marked them a bit less consistently than I thought. Oops!
Weighted Quilt
I actually didn’t notice when I took this picture… I noticed after I had filled and sewn 2 rows closed with poly pellets. So, not perfectly “square” but it does the trick just fine. Note that I sewed around the sides and bottom in this photograph, leaving the tops of the columns open so I can add the poly pellets.
I purchased the poly pellets I used from the PatternsPlantsMore Etsy store.
Quilter’s Dream Dream Pink
Also, here’s a quick update on the Quilter’s Dream Dream Pink batting. There were great questions about the batting after the last post, and I was able to find that the pink fibers are actually extruded pink and not dyed. 10% of Dream Pink sales go to breast cancer research.
Weighted Quilt – Poly Bead Fill Tool
Another great outcome from the last post I shared: Jan from Cocoa Quilts mentioned that she used a wrapping paper tube to help pour the beads down the columns. It’s a brilliant idea, and while I did not have a wrapping paper tube on hand, I was able to use a funnel and a bit of aluminum tube to accomplish the same goal.
Weighted Quilt – Filling the Final Row
For the final three rows, I switched to using a paper towel tube along with the funnel, and to fill the final row, I cut down the length of the paper towel tube in half. As the quilt rows were filled with beads and sewn shut, the quilt obviously became heavier and heavier. To fill the final rows, I folded the quilt in half lengthwise and then draped it back and forth across the floor so that the top row was standing nice and upright propped against a wall. After pouring in the final row’s poly pellets, I taped the top edge closed.
Weighted Quilt – Sewing the Final Row Closed
Maneuvering carefully to my sewing machine, I always tried to keep the quilt as upright as possible to keep the polly pellets snug in the bottom of the row I was sewing closed. For the final row, sewing needed to progress slowly. I would pull a bit of the tape that was closing off the pocket back, and then stitch forward following the edge of the tape marking the line I wanted to sew. As you can see in the picture, the quilt is still folded in half lengthwise at this point, aiding in my ability to keep the pockets as upright as possible while sewing. I became adept at feeling for the poly pellets between the layers and jouncing the quilt to snuggle the pellets down and away from where I was sewing.
Weighted Quilt – Sewing the Final Row Closed
Also notice that I used my walking foot to sew the two layers together and through this entire finishing process. As Jacquie Gering says, it’s a walking foot – so walk, don’t run. A bit of patience and slow forward sewing later, and I had the weighted quilt filled and sealed!
Weighted Quilt – Final Trim
Having left a lot of extra room around the edge of the quilt, I went back and trimmed so that there is 1/2-inch beyond all the edge seams. The final step will be to stitch on a label and binding!
Fascinating I love your whole ideas and how you achieve your goal. May be a silly question but do the poly pellets wash on an ordinary wash or do you need to launder the quilt differently? Thank you for sharing your wonderful quilts with us xxx
Yvonne, seeing the actual quilt come to life is fascinating. Thank you for sharing your process and thought behind it!
Yvonne, glad the tube tip worked for you. It is looking great!
Looks like you figured out the hard parts and avoided getting pellets everywhere. Great job!
Thanks for sharing your tips. Keeping those pellets from going all over the place is real tricky. I got all the way to the last row before spilling some. Your weighted blanket turned out nice.
This has been quite an adventure.
Thanks for sharing your whole process, Yvonne! Just curious…are the beads washable, so the finished quilt can be washed?
Fascinating! And very well done. How does the quilt feel when you drape it on your lap? Is it heavy? Does it feel good? I am so curious!
What a great gift! Thoroughly enjoying watching it in progress. And of course you would have the metal tube to attach to the funnel! 😉
I always think it’s wonderful how projects like this can challenge us! Glad to see your progress and success.
Thanks for showing us the process along the way and sharing all of the tips.
been reading these posts with interest. I must admit I like when a quilt is tucked up round me. You can say to your niece, night night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!
This is fascinating and I think you have done a marvelous job. You should be pleased.
How do the pellets spread out through each tube? It is a great idea but I can not see how the weight would be evenly distributed from top to bottom. Now that I look again, I can see the horizontal lines of quilting going across each row. This is ingenious! Thanks for explaining your process. By the way, I am completing the binding on my transparency quilt. A bit behind the others but so glad I did this!
Thank you for showing step by step process of making the weighted quilt. It is a marvelous gift and you did it so perfect. Just one question I have is did you measure the pellets for each square, so it is uniform?
How very interesting to watch you go through this process!
It came together nicely! I might have missed it if you said it already, but what is the final weight of the finished quilt? Great job. Looking forward to seeing it with the binding on.
Thank you for the detailed explanation of your version of a weighted blanket. It was all very helpful.
Hello again today Yvonne; I am so delighted, I took the time right now and read these posts on this tutorial. This is such a fascinating technique. I may be asking a way to personal question, but I do not quite understand what the weighted quilts are for, could you give a little bit of information on this? You know I will understand if it is something personal. You have sparked my interest and I can tell, I need to do some research of my own. Thank you for sharing your special tutorial!
‘Extruded pink’ has me more confused than ‘dyed pink’! Hubby just explained it has something to do with how they make plastics.