Dawn from the studio has made this really useful Liberty Picnic Blanket. We are all doing so much more walking here at the moment as it’s our only chance to get out of lockdown for some essential exercise. She’s taking it out and about with her daily for her walk. It uses PVC coated Atlas Liberty fabric.
I asked Dawn about the project. “I was tempted to try and make a mini picnic blanket using the glossy PVC. When my husband and I go on a walk together we can never seem to find a suitable place to sit down and have a coffee (which is an essential part of the walk!). This mini blanket is about the size of 2 bottoms. It will fold up small enough to fit in my rucksack with a flask, cups and, more importantly, a cake of some sort!
I chose the Atlas design and was able to vaguely match it to some tartan material that had begun life as a pair of curtains. I quilted this topper to some bamboo wadding and then laid it on top of the glossy PVC.
I cut the PVC slightly larger to enable me to fold it over the quilted material to form a binding (a trick Alice showed me when binding one of her quilts). I was only able to do a single fold (a double fold was too bulky), and mitred the corners for a neat (ish!) finish.
Things that might be useful to know when working with glossy PVC:
1. It cuts really easily and does not fray at all – so perfect for this project.
2. I didn’t want to put pins in the PVC and leave holes, so I used sellotape to hold it in place.
3. You need to encase the seams with tissue paper to enable the PVC to slide through the sewing machine (trust me – I had several aborted attempts before I figured this out!).
4. Perhaps use a similar coloured tissue paper to the PVC you have chosen. I used bright red (big mistake – as although the paper ripped away easily there were tiny scraps left in the stitching which needed to be picked out – bright red showing up nicely against the navy!)
5. Glossy PVC stitched really well and is soft and flexible, so ideal for folding the blanket away and stuffing into the rucksack.
Happy sewing everyone.
