Tips

Tips, Techniques and Suggestions:

 

  • Use a Moustache Trimmer for fast seam ripping! JoAnn Oakes
  • To help press strips sets straight, draw a line on your ironing board cover with a permanent marker.  Line up your strip as you press.  Joanne P
  • Before you do anything with a new pattern, read your pattern completely through.  You may be able to use shortcuts.
  • One of my favorite blocks in “Puss in the Corner”.  You can use feature fabric in the center, stretch it out, it even creates a chain thru the quilt.  Cheryl
  • Favorite Block:  Ohio Star Karen Bain
  • Use wine charms to identify your scissors, cuter, ruler when you go to class.
  • Black forces, disciplines, authorizes, strengthens, encourages independence.  It represents death, mourning and desolation.  A neutral color.
  • One of my favorite quilts is the central medallion format.  After deciding on a center, each border is planned on at a time.  I often alternate pieced and appliquéd borders for added visual interest.  The challenge of course is making the pieced borders turn the corner.  In a medallion quilt the center should be the lightest—boarders get increasingly darker to highlight the center.  Connie
  • Tone is the lightness or darkness of a color.
  • My favorite trick is to use a “scrap leader”.  Run a doubled piece of scrap fabric to run between blocks, rows, etc.  This saves time and threat.  It also neatens the back of your quilt—no long dangly threads.  Cheryl
  • Don’t play in the street.
  • Green rests, balances, normalizes refreshes; encourages emotional growth.  Green is found in gardens, hills and forests.  It often represents re-growth and life, healing and youth.  It is very passive and relaxing.
  • Double-sided tape on the back of your template will help to secure the templates when you are tracing around it.
  • Favorite book:  The Artist’s Way▬A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity▬ by Julia Cameron.
  • Use a wallpaper roller to press seams.  Great for where bulky seams meet.
  • Make quilting a priority.
  • Sharpen your scissors by cutting on a glass.  Joyce
  • Monochromatic means many values of one color.  Achromatic means without color~using only neutral colors.
  • Store marking pencils in a toothbrush travel container to protect sharpened points
  • Support PBS.
  • When quilting your “grid” work, crossing already sewn seams, tucks sometimes happen.  Before continuing, give a tug on the space to distribute the layers evenly, and pin several times along the stitching line.  Joanne P.
  • Magnetic bowls from auto parts store are great “pincushions”.
  • I love to use “Tangles™” when having to make a lot of ½ sq. triangles.  Shari
  • Use 7/16” diameter clear plastic tubing cut into small rings, cut through one side of small ring and slip around bobbin.
  • Your quilt, your way!
  • Sewing rounded curves with the concave piece on the bottom.  The feed dogs help to ease the fullness.  Concave  (   Convex )
  • Ways to improve free motion quilting—quilt in a slip so the quilt fabric doesn’t stick to you, have a glass of wine, listen to music, cut the finger tips out of your quilting gloves so you don’t have to take gloves off to pick up things, etc.  And don’t forget to breathe and relax your shoulders!  Take a break and walk around.
  • Removing blue marks:  ½ baking soda to 1 cup water.  Spritz heavily.  Jill
  • Blue relaxes, refreshes, and cools; produces tranquility and peace.  Blue is found in the sky and water, it has a calm and peaceful effect.  Turquoise is warm and happy.  Blues decrease blood pressure, heart rate, encourages rest, and hence is popular in bed and bath.
  • Alcohol wipes are wonderful to clean fusible off of your iron.  You can also use rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball.  The wipes are also useful to remove the gunk left by price stickers.
  • Take lots of photographs, wherever you go.  These will provide design inspiration and guidance back in your studio. Katie Pasquini Masopust.
  • Use navy thread on black fabric and black thread on navy fabric. This makes it easier to rip out if needed.
  • Never play jacks on a hot sidewalk.
  • Paper piecing tip. Buy a doddle pad and have it cut down to the right size for printing paper and use it for your patterns. It tears very easily. It is so much easier than other paper that I have tried. The color is a little tan but it does not affect the print at all. Karen Brimhall

Class notes on needles and thread

More tips coming…….