Posted in Quilting

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Quilt At The Beginning

Class Preparation

Fabric, Needles, and Threads

 

 

 

Hello Everyone!  Happy Valentines Day!!  I pray you each enjoyed this day we celebrate Love.  Loving our Lord, Our Husbands, Our children, or our neighbors and friends.  Never taking for granted what we have and grateful for those in our lives who love us without condition.

 

Today is all about Fabric, Needles and Threads.

 

The difference in Fabric Quality

I must say before this class, I thought fabrics were just fabrics.  They all looked and felt the same.  Who knew that while beautiful cotton fabric looked the same, some could be pre-washed, have tighter weaves, some with more quality dyes. Truth be told, cotton fabrics sold in mass merchandise stores are different from those stores that sell only quality tight woven fabrics specifically.  Never would I have thought I’d start being choosey about fabrics.  BUT, I’m told that many quality quilts made to last beyond our lifetime are and always have been made with quality fabric.  Not many Manufacterers make the quality fabrics anymore that our ancestors used when they hand-quilted their quilts to use for long, hard winters out of necessity.  Today we are able to choose.  With the economy the way it is, we can get by with buying what’s on sale at our local stores.  However, if we’re consciousely making a quilt with character and intend to keep it long past our years for our childrens children, or enter them in the State Fair, well, then we’d want to choose the more expensive, quality, cotton or flannel which won’t pull or shed.

 

Less expensive threads tend to be loosely woven with fewer threads per inch and later will cause your quilt to stretch or distort. For quilts we are warned to stay away from Poly/Cotton blends  which shrink like crazy or Iron your shapes together for the squares.  THIS IS NOT something you want to happen.  It’s a waste of money for the fabric when this happens and adds extra time to the quilting process.

 

Choosing your Fabric Colors and Styles

 

With most quilts, you will need the following:

 

 Focal Fabric:  The big pink fabric

 

Light Fabric:  The teal floral

 

And a Dark Fabric:  The dark green pattern

 

 

Nina as well as the author Alex Anderson express the importance of choosing your fabrics carefully.  They dictate the mood and look for your quilt overall.  The idea is to be sure to pick light, medium and dark-colored fabrics to compliment one another.

 For instance, this quilt made by one of the many quilters at Calico Gals (where I’ve taken my class). You’ll see light greens, dark greens, medium greens, light reds, medium, and dark reds.  Using fabric with print variety adds a touch of fun and elegance as well.    While you would think none of them would match with one another, it looks REALLY cool in the end.  As Alex Anderson puts it in her book Start Quilting with Alex Anderson, If you use only one size prints, your quilt tends to look as though it has the chicken pox. So don’t be afraid to use small print with big, lines with floral, It may just surprise you and you should SEE the quilts these women make at the Calico Gals store. Utterly Astounding!! Experiment with your quilts and HAVE FUN!

 

Go With The Grain

 

Fabric is produced with threads that are woven two directions which give you your length and your width which is called the “straight of the grain” If you cut triangular from the top corners, you would be cutting along the bias (for those like me who’ve never sewed in their lifetime). Nina is a stickler for ALWAYS pressing the corner biases with an Iron because they stretch and if not pressed correctly, will make your square and maybe even the full quilt off a tad bit. 

 

The long finished edges are called salvages (notice the white edge on the far lefthand side of the fabric in the picture?  That’s a Salvage!) and should always be cut off because they are hard to sew through and could also distort your block.  I am told that hand-quilters  LOATHE the salvages.  I’ll be learning to hand quilt sometime soon as well. That’s my next class.

 

Preparing the Fabric

 

While many advanced quilters can work with both, as a new quilter, I was urged to be sure my fabrics are pre-washed to prevent them from shrinking or bleeding into the other lighter fabrics which would ruin the whole quilt and be a waste of hard-earned money to buy the fabrics to begin with. If your fabrics continue to bleed, you can soak the fabrics in a Retayne, Synthopol, which can both be found in fabric stores, OR if your like me and want to keep away from chemicals, Get the good ol’ water and vinegar solution out (1/2 to ½).  If your fabric runs yet again, get rid of it.  It will ruin the rest of your colors in the quilt later on and probably isn’t a very good quality fabric to use in your quilt anyways.

 

Thread

 

Use ONLY a 100% cotton thread.  Nina, my teacher,  LOATHES the poly/cotton blend and says it’s a bad choice to use in a machine and sometimes is flimsy and will break.  Cotton holds well and just works the best overall.  Be sure when you are getting your thread you are matching it with the neutral color of your focal fabric.  You want the thread to blend in, not to take over the piece you worked so hard to make.

 

Machine Needles

 

Usually the needles used for machine quilting are size 10 or 11/ 70 or 75.  If you end up using a cotton/blend go ahead and use the Universal.  Just be sure you have a bunch of extra needles on hand that are nice and sharp. You don’t want the dull needles ruining your nice fabrics.

 

Another asset to have is the Walking Foot which is used when your sewing layers of fabric and batting so your machine will glide nicely and won’t make your fabrics pucker.

 

So there you have it.  Now your ready to pick your batting. Which we’ll discuss in the next lesson on February 28, 2008.

 

So come back again and Happy quilting!

Rebekah Shearer

Contributing Writer