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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I've been thinking about all the things that quilters figure out along the way. There is a lot to learn, and as a beginner, you can't absorb it all at once. One example is yardage. Occasionally a non-quilter will ask me how much fabric it takes to make a quilt. I'm not hedging when I [...]
In the spring, I designed a little sampler quilt for a retreat I'm co-hosting this fall. I did the piecing on the HQ Stitch 510 and then I quilted it on the 710. This is Petit Patchwork. The idea is to help retreaters learn some new skills and perfect some basic skills by making this [...]
