I’ve been trying to figure out how to sew the squares together. With the quilts I’ve done to date I’ve sewn the pieces together on a pellon (interfacing) backing and then lined the squares up, overlapped the pellon backing and sewn the squares together. I’ve used heavy black thread with a zigzag overstitching technique and have liked the effect: I find it emphasizes the graphic nature of the quilt patterns.

With the trapunto quilted prints, as I imagined how they would look sewn together with the black zigzag I thought it would break up the interlocking circles too much. There also was no muslin on the back since there was no piecing involved in these squares. I actually like it when I’m posed with a problem to work through so I thought through several different solutions and tried to imagine how the squares would look.

I could do a full pellon or muslin backing and sew the pieces together on that. That would accomplish the main goal of adding the backing, giving the whole thing extra strength. But it would be apt to make the sewing together of the squares and the edging (which I’m also still thinking through) a little awkward.

I could also try whipstiching each of the pieces individually with a piece of pellon on it’s back and then whipstitching the individual squares together. This is known as potholder quilting. It’s a technique that was and is popular among quilting guilds. In essence each individual square is it’s own quilt. If made to the same size they can then be joined up and sewn together to form a single quilt. This was common during the Civil War, it is also how the Aids Memorial Quilt was begun. It also seemed like a lot of handstitching…

I fairly quickly knocked both of these ideas off the list and decided to go with placing strips of pellon behind the pieces to be sewn together. Then I thought about the thread. I decided to go with a thinner white thread to let the circles stand out rather than the join marks between the squares.

Here’s how the first two look joined together:

Now for the rest of the quilting and joining (and figure out how to do the ribbon work on the edging)…