Tuesday Tip - Perfect (and EASY) square corners on your quilts!

I picked up this great tip for making the corners of your binding square at a SewExpo class, taught by Kaye Woods. (If you haven't been to the Sew Expo in Puyallup, you must go this year - it is such a fabulous opportunity to learn great techniques and see all the latest in sewing. We are so lucky to have one of the largest and most exciting sewing events of the year in our backyard! And be sure to sign up for seminars - we are going to have great ones!)  Kaye is the host of Kaye's Quilting Friends on public television, and I loved this simple tip!

 

 When you stitch your binding on, stop with needle down just before you reach the end of your quilt - if you are using a 1/2" seam allowance, stop 1/2" before the end.  Rotate your project 45 degrees, so your stitching is now pointed to the corner. Stitch to the corner.

Take the loose end of your binding and fold it away from your quilt, so that it follows the little angle you have just added, and the raw edge of the loose end is even with the next edge that you will be sewing the binding onto.




Keeping the little crease you just made, fold the loose end down and into place along the edge to be stitched, raw wedge matched with the edge of your quilt. Begin stitching right at the upper edge. 




Your corners will look like this...



Until you whipstitch the loose edge onto the back - you will find you have perfect, neat, square corners - like they just want to be square!

Thanks Kaye Woods, for the great tip!



- Anna-Beth



Tuesday Tip: Quick Color Confidence for Cautious Quilters

This week's Tuesday tip comes from Marian,  who works at our 4th Ave Outlet store. Marian was the Block of the Month leader at our dearly departed Issaquah store, and often helped beginning quilters with this awesome tip.

With our thousands of choices, the process of finding colors that harmonize and contrast attractively leaves many quilters feeling insecure and overwhelmed. Marian advises to make it simple  - go find a single colorful print that you love.  I found this gorgeous "Autumn Medley" print from Martha Negley:

Once you have found your print, look at the colors in it - you picked that print, so you must love those colors! Now wander the store, looking for tonal fabrics in those colors.  I collected these around Northgate:



Now I have a group of colors that harmonize and contrast, and I love them - I'm ready to start planning a quilt!

If you try this technique, don't forget to pick up some of the print you loved - it would make a fabulous backing or border for the quilt that was inspired by its colors.

 - Anna-Beth

For more complex explorations of color, be sure to check our classes!  We have a Color Confidence course at our Everett store, and a Choosing and Using Color class at our Bellevue store.  Lots of fun, and great confidence builders!

Tuesday Tip: Clean up your cutting with rulers that don't slip!

I have wasted so much fabric with crooked cutting! I love my rulers and rotary cutter, but sometimes, as I cut strips and blocks, that darn ruler just twisted a little, and my cut wafted over to the left or right,  and I had to waste more fabric cleaning up the edge. 

Then one day I was checking out the Staff Picks at our Outlet on 4th store, and saw that someone recommended InvisiGrip to fix this problem.  I'd never seen this product before, and took some home to try it out.  It's basically a thin sheet of clear rubbery plastic, backed with paper - you just cut it to fit your ruler, peel it off the backing, and stick it to the back of your ruler.  That is all there is to it, and as if by magic, your ruler stays put, your cutting is immediately better, and you are no longer wasting fabric and time with slippery cuts. 

Invisigrip is sold in a piece 12 1/2" by 1 yard long, which was enough for me to do my two most frequently used rulers - my 12 1/2" square, and my 8 1/2" by 24" ruler. Since that initial purchase two years ago, I have bought one more package, which was enough to do most of my smaller templates and rulers. At only $5.99 a package, it is a great investment in saving yourself fabric and frustration. Yay Invisigrip!

 - Anna-Beth

Tuesday Tip: No More Tangles Binding Solution

There are few things more satisfying than sewing the binding on a quilt. You've finished with the piecing, sandwiching, quilting, and trimming, and all that is left is getting that binding on. But then you are confronted with the tangled pile of yards of binding, picking up scraps and stray threads (not to mention dog hair at my house!) from the floor as you work, and it takes some of the satisfaction away.  My lovely quilting friend Lynn gave me this awesome trick, and I use it all the time.

I keep an extra empty thread spool around - one of the larger ones, from a larger spool. I make my binding,  and wind it on the spool. 

There is a post on my sewing machine for using cone threads, or perhaps for a second spool for twin needle work - I usually just use mine to store extra empty bobbins.

When I am ready to sew on my binding, I just put the spool of binding onto that post, pull down the end that I am starting to sew on, and start stitching. The binding winds off smoothly, stays clean and untangled, and I get to enjoy putting the binding on.

Thanks Lynn, for the great suggestion!  I use it all the time - and now all of you can, too!

~ Anna-Beth

Fast and Easy Quilt with an African Beat!

A couple of weeks ago Annette told you about a new line from Hoffman Fabrics called African Beat… well I absolutely fell in love with this line. All the browns, rusts and greens are just perfect and the amazing giraffe allover is the icing on the cake.

Now the only problem was… What am I going to make out of all these beautiful fabrics? I went online to the Hoffman website and downloaded the free quilt pattern for African Beat, bought the required fabric and set to work cutting and sewing.

The vertical lines of this quilt are perfect for this fabric and it went together really fast and easy. My only recommendation is to trace all the circles on the fusible web, iron it to the uncut fabric and then cut the circles out rather than all the steps the pattern describes.

I stitched around each of the circles using
a variegated thread and zigzag stitch.

When I got the top all put together, as shown in the pattern, it was beautiful but was lacking a little something. I decided it needed an outside border; so I bought another yard of the brown leaves and added a five inch border. This really made the quilt pop and helped finish it off.

The finished quilt... isn't it beautiful!

I then brought it to our custom quilter who helped me piece the back and then did an amazing job quilting it with a leaf pattern similar to those in the border.

Close up of the amazing quilting.

TIP: Matching the Back-

• On the first panel iron one edge over, wrong sides together, and line the design up with that on the other panel.
• Unfold the edge and sew along the crease.

This gives you a perfectly matched back and a nearly invisible seam. For this quilt I used the giraffe allover making the back almost as amazing as the front especially with the gorgeous quilting.

Everyone was so impressed with how this quilt turned out that we decided to make it into a kit which should be arriving in the next couple of weeks at a store near you!

Happy Quilting!
Michelle