Quilting Prep Tricks

I know you all are probably sick of this quilt by now, but I wanted to share a couple more tricks I use to prepare a project for quilting. First I press everything with the steam iron on the highest setting, to get the top and backing as flat as I can before I sandwich it with the batting:

When I put the backing fabric down, either on my sewing room table (up to lap-size) or the tile floor (bigger than lap-size) I tape the corners and sides of the fabric to keep it from shifting while I'm pinning the layers together:

I start in the center of the quilt when I pin everything, and I use safety pins now because they don't stab me while I'm hand quilting. Every quilter has their own method of pinning or basting; I like to pin every six inches to prevent shifting and bunching.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

I'm not getting sick of seeing this! It's going to look wonderful.

Have you tried the pin covers? They're so much easier on my hands though your guy would probably have to put them on the pins to start, but their made for people with arthritic hands, long nails or people who's fingers just get tired when working with a lot of safety pins.

June 13, 2020 at 6:51 AM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

Search This Blog