Basting a large quilt

Whilst collecting quilts to take to the Auction of Promises, it occurred to me how many WIP I have. Many of the tops have been completed (or almost completed) and I have backs for but haven't basted. The reason? I hate basting. REALLY hate it.

I've watched numerous videos and read tons of articles where people show you how to baste but they always use little baby quilts or smaller. I don't make quilts that small - all of mine are lap size or bigger. The mechanics of moving that weight of quilt around tires me out just thinking about it. 

My technique is fairly straight forward but does include a bit of manual labour. I dare anyone to find a basting technique for larger quilts that doesn't.

1. Find a willing victim. My housemate is now very experienced (and bless him, willing!) in basting.

2. Clear out a large area with a hard surface. I use our tiled conservatory floor. Make sure it's as clean as you can get it.

3. Grab some pins or curved safety pins, some sticky tape (I find masking tape the best) and something to baste with (I use spray but pins and tags work well too).

4. Fold your backing material in half lengthwise and mark each edge of the fold with a pin or safety pin inserted exactly in the crease of the fold. This marks the centre of each short side. Unfold the back and refold it widthwise. Mark the centre of each long side with a pin or safety pin. Your back should now have a pin in the middle of each side.

5. Unfold the back and lay it out, as smoothly as you can, on your surface with the wrong side up. Smooth out as many wrinkles as you can and tape down the edges, about every 5-6". Don't over stretch the back - you want it smooth, not taut. 

6. Lay your batting on top of the back, ensuring that it's as evenly spread out as possible. Smooth out any big wrinkles but don't worry too much about small ones - they'll quilt out.

7. If you are using basting spray, fold your batting back away from half of your quilt and spray the exposed wrong side of the back lightly with basting spray. Relay the batting back on top and smooth out, repeat with the other half of the back and batting. You should be able to tell when you reach the mid point of the batting where you've already sprayed as it won't lift easily from the back anymore.

8. Repeat step 4 with your quilt top.

9. Lay your quilt top down on top of your batting, wrong side down ensuring that the pins marking the centre of the sides of the quilt top line up with the pins in the centre of the backing. They won't lay perfectly on top of each other because your top will be smaller than your backing but they should be in line.

10. Either pin all over with curved safety pins or repeat step 7 if you are using basting spray.

11. Carefully remove the masking tape from the backing and quilt your sandwich!

If this doesn't motivate me to do some basting, nothing will!

Finish it up...Monday?

I know, I know, I'm at least three days late for Finish it up Friday but I've finally finished the binding on my Leah Day building blocks quiltalong. I'm really pleased with how it came out; now it's all washed it's lovely and crinkly, partially due to the mix of cotton fabric and batting with polyester Isacord quilting thread.

One thing I'm slightly disappointed by is the grey Fons and Porter ceramic marking pencil which hasn't come out in the wash. I used the pencil to mark the quilting lines on several of the blocks and, even after a thorough wash at 30 degrees, some of the marks are still visible.

Hopefully they'll fade over time and successive washing. Has anyone had a similar experience and got any advice for removing the marks?

Electrifying the quilting process

I've now spent a few hours playing around with EQ7 and, whilst I've still got a long way to go, I've at least managed to design a few blocks and quilts.

I've also discovered that I'm rubbish at naming quilts. I ended up calling this one "On Target" for lack of any other inspiration. Any suggestions from people more creative than me are definitively welcome!

I've wanted to do a monochrome quilt for a while and the combination of curves and straight line seemed to fit in with the modern quilt movement which I seem to be leaning towards these days.

The splash of pink is completely out of my usual comfort zone but seemed to finish off the design.

Meanwhile, back to the drawing board...

Siblings Together - a plea for blocks!

A quick plea today for anyone able to provide some blocks for quilts for the organisation Siblings Together, a charity which provides opportunities for contact for siblings separated by the foster and adoption care systems.

Mary Emmens at Handmade by Mary Emmens is collecting simple nine patch slash blocks to go into quilts which will be gifted to siblings at Siblings Together events.

Full details can be found in Mary's guest blog on Lily's Quilts including the prescribed colour scheme, sizes and pattern. 

It's a fab opportunity to crack open that stash, whip up a few simple blocks and give a child the comfort and security that they may be missing at such a vital time in their lives.

Two lies and a truth about free motion quilting

I'll be the first to admit to being a novice at FMQ; I've only been trying for a few years. If you're looking for a complete, professional guide to starting free motion quilting this isn't it!

There are many great resources out their for beginners. Some you have to pay for (the incredible Angela Walters's Craftsy classes jump to mind immediately or even a class at your local quilt shop) and some are free (everything you could ever want to know is available at Leah Day's website which regularly had new videos and projects). It's all out there.

There are a few things which have jumped out at me over the last few years of learning - two of them no-one ever tells you and one which I wish I'd realized sooner.

1. You can't FMQ on any old sewing machine. Some people will tell you that you can use any machine that can sew a straight stitch and, whilst that might technically be true, in my experience that isn't true for a beginner. My baby Brother machine couldn't drop its feed dogs; instead Brother provided a little plastic plate to cover them up. Unfortunately the first time the quilt sandwich pushed against the plate, it popped up, blocked the needle, which then snapped and pinged up in my face. Twice. After dicing with an eye injury I had to admit defeat and straight line quilt instead.

2. Some designs just aren't possible on a domestic machine. Those beautiful designs you've seen on award winning quilts were probably done on a long arm machine where the quilter can access the whole width of the quilt top in one sweep. Don't get me wrong - there are lots of awesome patterns that you can achieve on a domestic machine if you can only access 10" square or so of your quilt at any one time, some patterns are going to be out of reach.

3. Now for the truth. A friend of a friend was recently playing the piano with a grace, fluidity and accuracy I could only envy. After he had finished, I said to him "there's a magic button someone on the piano that lets you play like that, right?!". "Yes", he replied "but they only show you where it is after the 700th hour of practice."

FMQ requires practice, regularly. When I started out I wanted to be able to flawlessly quilt feathers, spirals, flowers and more. And I wanted it now. No waiting. I've now grudgingly accepted that I need to keep practicing to stay good and get even better. One day I'll find that magic button, I know it's there somewhere.

Back to basics

Today I finished off the Quilt As You Go sashing between the rows of the Leah Day Building Blocks quiltalong. All I need to do now is trim up the edges and bind it. It's so great to have to miss out the horrible basting bit!

The blocks in this quilt are a lot simpler than I normally tackle and I must confess that I didn't originally start this quilt because of the piecing. Instead I wanted to use it to practise my free motion quilting. And whilst I did get a lot of great quilting practise (my circles are now great so long as I can mark the quilt top!), the piecing was a good reminder about fundamental blocks and techniques. With huge four patches in high contrast fabrics, there's no room to hide if your points don't perfectly match up. It's a good reminder to me that, amidst all the fancy needle point applique and bias bars, it don't mean a thing if your 1/4" seam is off.

On a separate note, how cool is this back?! I need to add a monochrome quilt to my bucket list. You can't get more basic than b&w.

Moda Building Blocks pattern by Simply Solids

Along with lots of other quilters I'm currently piecing together the Moda Building Blocks pattern. One of my favourite shops, Simply Solids are running the pattern as a block of the month club using Kona by Robert Kaufman solids. They've cleverly matched all the tones and hues of the original pattern to produce an almost identical finished quilt.

So far we've pieced the HUGE 36" blocks, a 30", 24" and 18" blocks and we're now working our way through the 12" blocks. Still to come are some 6" blocks with tiny pieces. Yay!

Here's some pics of the larger blocks...

And some of the smaller ones...

Apart from one flying goose unit where I lost point and will probably redo, I'm fairly happy with them so far even though some of the techniques were not my usual style. For instance - I'm a "stitch and flip" flying goose girl. I know it wastes some fabric but I liked not having to sew those bias seams. Ditto for half square triangles where I like to create them two at a time by sewing down the middle of squares and then cutting them apart.

There's none of that in his pattern where all the triangles are cut on the bias and then carefully pieced together. I've talked before about why I love BOM projects and this is a good example of why. I would have stuck to my tried and tested methods if this project hadn't forced me to try something different. And now I have a new skill to show for all my hard (yeah right!) work.

Let's see whether I'm so sanguine after sewing those 3/4" seams in the 6" blocks!

First loves and first quilts

My first quilt was a Lemoyne Star, hand pieced with white satin and bronze crinkled polyester. Yes, crazy I know. The poor choice of block (for a beginner anyway) and fabric just shows how naive I was. I still haven't finished piecing it to this day and it sits, all alone, in a little box in the corner of my lounge. Poor thing, I must finish it at some point.

My second quilt was a brown and orange disappearing nine patch monstrosity (I nicked named it "Thing") which I machine pieced on my old Brother. I purposefully chose cheap and ugly fabric so that I would be disappointed if I ruined it. I tried to free motion quilt on the Brother but, despite what everyone tells you, it just wasn't possible on a machine which couldn't drop its feed dogs and had a very flimsy foot and ankle. After two broken needles and almost an eye injury, I ended up doing wobbly straight line quilting with a walking foot. But I didn't care about clashing fabric, mismatched seams or wonky lines - I was in love with quilting.

My third quilt was a simple window box design using a jelly roll and a charm pack of Town Square Quilts by Kathy Schmitz for Moda was straight forward sashing. The finished top was so beautiful that I didn't want to sully it with my feeble attempts at quilting so sent my little quilt top away to be quilted by someone else. And here it is in all its glory.

When I received the finished quilt I was delighted with the work but felt that I had somehow abandoned my little project. I'd bought, planned, cut and pieced it but had somehow let it down at the final hurdle. It didn't feel like my quilt anymore. The fact that the quilting was so perfect and finished the quilt so completely somehow made things worse. I was determined from that moment to find a way to quilt my own pieced tops. As a result, I bought Naomi, my Janome, and together we have pieced and quilted many quilts, play mats, candle cozies and more. 

So it wasn't my first quilt or even my first machine that got me hooked. But without that Lemoyne star and the very basic Brother, I wouldn't have Dresden plates, double wedding rings and Naomi.

Avoid getting the elbow aka how to cut perfectly straight strips from yardage

One of the big issues that I struggled with for a while was cutting straight strips of fabric from yardage. I always struggled with the bulk of the fabric and would end up with 44" long Z shaped strips. What a waste of fabric.

Eventually (and many yards later) I've perfected a technique that works for me and I've set it out below (along with some very basic pictures).

1. Get your tools ready. You're going to need a ruler that's at least 12" long and at least 4" wide (the wider the better). Your also going to need a clean cutting mat (no pins or lint please - running over a pin with your rotary cutter is a bad idea as I've discovered) and a rotary cutter with a sharp blade. If you can't remember when you changed the blade last you probably need to. And yes, that's a Fons and Porter Klutz Glove in the picture which is now wear when cutting. My New Years present to myself was cutting off the end of my left thumb. Ouch.

2. Check your pattern and work out how much yardage you need to cut right now. Not total, but just for now. Trying to cut 1.5" strips from a piece of fabric 4 yards long is a nightmare - you'll have yards of bulky fabric to deal with and if your workspace is anything like mine, it'll probably end up hanging off the end of your cutting table. This weight will drag your fabric down, causing you to miscut. If possible, try to sub cut your yardage into more manageable pieces, for instance yard wide pieces. If you're just cutting 20 4" squares now, you don't need more than a fat quarter.

3. Tear your fabric into smaller pieces. This is terrifying the first time you do it but it's worth it to avoid dealing with all that bulk. Make a small snip in the selvedge along the cross grain line (ie cutting into the fabric perpendicular to the selvedge) and firmly grip the fabric either side of the tear.

With firm, steady pressure pull the two edges of the tear apart. What a fab noise! You'll probably have to reposition your hands at least once and repeat to tear a whole width of fabric.

Don't worry about ending up with wonky pieces - the tear will follow the grain line. Once you have finished tearing, trim off any loose threads and tidy up any puckered edges by smoothing them out.

4. Iron. I hate ironing. Seriously, I buy no-iron clothes for a reason. But when it comes to yardage, I always iron. If you buy your yardage from a bolt, the folds are randomly put in by the machine operator at the factory and there is no guarantee that he (or she) evenly fed the fabric onto the bolt. If your fabric was posted to you, the shop will have folded the fabric so it fits neatly into their packaging. To ensure you get a clean cut you're going to need to remove those misleading folds or the fabric will always want to lay in that position again. If you're going to starch your fabric, now is the time to do that too. I iron rather than press at this point as there is no bias to worry about and, let's be honest, pressing yards of fabric takes too long.

5. Fold your fabric once. For me, this is the most important part of this whole process to get right. I have a small cutting mat so I fold my yardage twice so that it fits on my mat. Firstly, pick the fabric up along one selvedge, holding a corner in each hand between your index and middle finger. Hold the fabric taut between your two hands.  

Then pick up the parallel corner (ie the other corner on the same side) and hold this corner between my thumb and index finger.  Again, hold the fabric taut.

You should be holding the fabric in front of you in a U shape with the bottom of the U handing down.

Line the two selvedge edges up using your fingers so that they are even and parallel. If you only have none or only one selvedge (because you have a half yard or fat quarter) line up the top and bottom of the fabric.  Does the fabric hang straight down from your hands or is there a twist, crease or bubble in it? 
If it hangs straights, great! Lay it down on your cutting mat exactly as you are holding it. If the fabric doesn't hang straight, the grain lines aren't parallel and it's not a happy bunny. If you cut your fabric like this, you would end up with wonky pieces.

To line up the grain lines, slide the front piece of fabric a little to to the right, ensuring that the selvedges (or top and bottom of the fabric) stay perfectly parallel.

You're not moving the front piece of fabric up or down, just over to the right. Does the bottom now hang straight? If not, try moving it over to the left. Keep wiggling the front fabric until it hangs evenly, always ensuring that the selvdges are still parallel. Once your fabric hangs straight, lay in carefully down on your cutting mat.

6. Fold your fabric again. This step is optional but if you've got a small cutting mat like me, you can't fit 22" of fabric onto your mat safely (I've tried, there was blood...). Being careful not to change the way the fabric lays, bring the bottom fold up so that it lays parallel to the selvdge but ends just under the selvdge. This will save you some fabric when you cut off the selvdges. The selvedges and the single fold should now be at the top of your mat, the double fold at the bottom closest to you.

7. Check you are still square. Gently run your finger down the double fold closest to you. If your fabric is square, the double fold should feel the same the whole way across the fabric and you shouldn't feel any gaps or edges in the fold. If you do, you need to repeat the above.

8. Even up the edge. I'm right handed and have never mastered the art of cutting left handed so I trim up the right hand side of my fabric first. I use my whole ruler to line up along the bottom of the fabric to my left to ensure everything is square.

Then I trim off the left hand edge and check the bit of fabric I've just cut off. Is it straight? Is it all in one piece? If not, I retrim.

Once this edge is trimmed and straight, I hold the edge carefully but firmly with both hands and flip the whole fabric over so that now te cut edge is on my left.

9. I now cut the strips I need from the left hand side of the fabric. Every 3 pieces or so, I check to ensure that the cut strips are straight and, if necessary, I retrim the edge to square it up again.

You should now have perfectly square and straight pieces!