Most of us would love to get through the cutting quickly, so we can move on to the sewing. I have some strategies for cutting because I don't enjoy it much. Twinkle uses many shades of green from my fabric stash. I make mostly scrap quilts—not necessarily quilts cut from a scrap basket, [...]
A few days ago, Carolyn in Florida left a comment about how much she disliked doing the cutting for a quilt project. I knew just what she meant. The cutting is never as much fun as the sewing. Over the years I have come up with some strategies that help me survive the cutting process. [...]
A friend and I were sewing together the other day, and we both noticed a few things that we do differently from each other. My pal commented on the speediness of my method for cutting units from strip sets, so I wanted to share it with you. When you make a strip set, above, you can [...]
Every so often I run into a piecing task with tricky intersections. They're the places that cause problems if they're not sewn accurately. My quilt of spools, thimbles and buttons for Quiltmaker magazine is a good example. The piecing is not complex, but the intersections where the "thread" meets the wood in the spools is tricky. [...]
For current owners of HQ Stitch machines, the best place to find information about HQ Stitch accessories is online at hqstitch.com. There are lists of which accessories are included with each machine, and there are lists of the optional add-on accessories. Let's start with the HQ Stitch 210, the perfect little take-along or starter machine. [...]
What's that you say? A practice sandwich? Yes, that's right. You need a sandwich of fabric, batting and backing so that you can practice new machine quilting ideas, warm up your muscles and your memory, and try out all kinds of stitches before you put them on your quilt. My oft-used practice sandwich is [...]
I love a day spent in class with a great quilting teacher and my sewing machine. What could be more fun? Unless you're having sewing machine problems. Then it can be pretty frustrating for you and for the teacher, who often has to help you trouble-shoot. I've been a student many times over the past [...]
We've been talking about the need to adjust the seam allowance when your patchwork isn't coming out accurately. If you own an HQ Stitch 710, we covered this in an earlier post. But if you own a different machine, there are two ways to adjust a seam allowance. Many times, my students aren't aware that [...]
I taught at a retreat earlier this month, and some of my students struggled with their seam allowance. More specifically, they couldn't wrap their head around the idea of measuring the patchwork instead of measuring the quarter-inch. Do you understand the difference? I gave them this exercise. Use patches cut 1-1/2" x 2-1/2"; five from [...]
