- I get a lot of questions asked
through emails, messages and comments,
and some of them, I just can't answer in a paragraph.
So today is another episode of The Quilt Coach
and the questions I'll be answering today are
How do I use these fabrics?
Is there a no-waste snowball method?
How do I get the bulk out of the the centre of my pinwheels
and how do I stop my fabrics from fraying?
So grab your cup of coffee and stick with me
while I show you how to do it.
(upbeat music)
Hi there, I'm Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts.
I give you tips, tricks and strategies
to help you make the quilt that you want to make.
And if you like what you see,
please hit that subscribe button.
I am so close to 200,000.
I'd really appreciate your support.
My first question today is from an online store in Montreal.
She sent me four fabrics and she asked me
what is the best way to use them.
So first, any time you're looking at fabric,
I say grab your templates.
You can recycle any old card stock to make them.
I talked about how to make them
in my video "10 Sewing Hacks With Templates",
and I showed you how to use them
in my video "Playing With Your Fabrics",
and we're going to use them here too.
Immediately, you can see that
this is a large print not really suitable for piecing,
as you can see when we lay out our templates
and shift them around.
If you would cut it small,
it would give an irregular colour distribution
and the theme of the fabric would be totally lost.
But where this fabric will shine is if you use it
in the borders or on the back.
What you can also see in the large scale is
the unusual theme of the fabric.
Though it has striking primary colours,
you have this dark theme with the ravens and the eyeballs
in the middle of the poppies.
I see this working in a vintage dress pattern
where the volume of fabric needed would suit the colours
and then people would take a second look
when they saw the actual print,
or use it in a place like the lining of a cape.
I showed this fabric to a friend who told me
that she didn't like the oranges of Halloween.
She really liked this fabric.
The second fabric are these juvenile prints.
One has whales and one has mermaids,
and I really love the diversity shown in these mermaids.
They are cute, they are fun.
One has a warm palette, one has a cool palette,
and though they don't work necessarily together,
they could be used exactly the same way
in many different projects, certainly a quilt,
from a very simple pattern using 4 inch squares
to a more complicated one.
It can be used in curtains, all sorts of things.
They are really cute fabrics.
And fabric number four is my favourite.
I think this is an amazing fabric.
I think you just need to put it on your front page
so that people know that you have it.
Up close, it's a dot,
but because there's an elongated shape of the dot,
it actually can play like a stripe.
And from afar, it turns into a diagonal stripe.
And since you've watched my video on how to use stripes,
you all know how to use this.
So basically this fabric could be used anywhere in a quilt.
It can be used in the borders, in the sashing,
in the binding, in the piecing.
And with the assortment of colours,
it can go either warm or cold.
And these dots are not on a white background.
It's definitely a cream, so it's not too high contrast.
This is a fabric I would buy by the yard.
If you guys are interested in any of these fabrics,
I'll leave a link to her online store in the notes.
The next question we have, Roslin F has asked me
if I had any snowball hacks.
Actually, I have a couple.
When you are making snowball blocks,
you are often making a lot of them.
So the first tip is to use some template plastic
to do the marking.
Some pattern directions will tell you to make your marks
on the smaller square, but I use this template
to make my sewing marks on the larger square.
With a template the size of the large square,
I mark the corners of the small square.
Then I draw a diagonal line between the 2 points
and I repeat in every corner.
Then I trim the template on this line.
And it is critical for the block
that your squares are perfectly square.
And I will make these ledges out of masking tape.
I slide my larger square into the corner
and put the template on top and mark,
making fast work of this task.
Many people have also asked me
how do I avoid wastage on my snowball block?
Honestly, this drives me batty too.
And this is my second tip.
So in method A, we are going to make a bonus HST block.
We make two templates, one for the sewing line,
and one is a 1/2 inch away from that sewing line.
And then we mark this line as well.
Then we sew the smaller square to the larger square,
and then we make another seam on that 1/2 inch line.
Cut in between the 2 lines and press.
And you can use this bonus HST block in your after quilt
or in your crumb quilting,
and I have a video on both of those topics,
and I will put a link in the notes below.
Now method 2 is the no-waste method.
We make 2 templates, one is on the sewing line
and the other is a 1/4 of an inch away from that sew line.
Now whatever size smaller square that the pattern asks for,
you actually cut a square 3/8 of an inch larger.
Then cut this square on the diagonal
between the two corners.
On the large square, trim on the 1/4 inch line,
then lay the 1/2 square triangle down so that the edge
of the 1/2 square triangle touches the outer line
and those two little bits on the outside are exactly
the same size.
Sew on the inner line.
Note that if you use this method, you need to plan ahead
as you will need half the amount of squares
that the pattern asks for,
but those squares are going to be 3/8 of an inch larger.
Diane Risso has asked,
"How do I keep my fabric from fraying?"
We quilt with woven cotton.
It has a straight grain and a cross grain.
Now with many sewing disciplines, it's really important
that your cross grain lies perfectly perpendicular
to our selvages.
In quilting, not so much because very often,
the print on top of the fabric isn't perfectly aligned
with the cross grain, and we are lucky in quilting
that gravity isn't working against us.
So we cut our fabric and we have this nice knife-cut edge.
And then we start moving our pieces around.
We move them to our design board,
then we move them to our sewing machine, then we iron it,
and we sew some more, and we repeat over and over again.
And all this movement has frictions working
against those exposed edges and we get threads everywhere.
The more the cross grain is showing, the worse it gets.
Threads happen.
There's not much you can do to prevent it,
but there are ways that you may slow the spread.
Number one, cut your fabric as you need it.
The shorter time that an edge is exposed,
the fewer threads will come off it.
Now, that's not always practical or logical,
and very often, the time it takes
to complete a quilt is much longer than we initially expect,
so use your discretion.
Quilting cotton comes with starch and stabilisers in it,
but if you prewash it, adding back in starch
can help stabilise your edges.
And when you store your finished blocks or flimsy,
it's best to store them with the raw edges in the centre.
This also holds true when you're just storing fabric.
And trim with a snip.
I know you want to pull out those threads as you find them,
but you might just pull those threads
back into your seam allowance, which you really don't want.
Some of you may be asking do you really need
to remove all the threads?
And the truth is no.
The only time that it really becomes an issue is
when you have very light fabrics with very dark fabrics
and you can trim and trim and trim,
and still those loose dark threads can get underneath
your light fabrics when you quilt them.
So have a tiny crochet hook handy so you can slip in
and grab them when they do.
Tara in Windsor has asked how do I spin my seams?
So after you make your blocks,
we have to sew our blocks together,
and that produces all sorts of bulk in your piecing
where the seams match up.
Some quilters think that by pressing your seams open,
you'll reduce bulk and it might help a little,
but it doesn't eliminate it.
And in my opinion, the loss of strength
in that seam just isn't worth it.
If those stitches unravel,
the batting underneath will be exposed.
So another alternative to this is spinning your seams.
Take a pair of blocks, sew them together nesting
those seams in the middle and sew.
But instead of folding everything to one side,
you open this seam,
and this seam,
and press them in a circular motion following the direction
of the previous seams.
And you get this nice little twirly spot in the middle,
and this is called spinning your seams.
I often find it hard to open these seams
after I sew, trying to find the right stitch to remove.
So I often take the first stitch out before I sew it
so I'm not poking around quite so much.
But you also need to come to terms with
that your work is not going to be flat.
You are working with fabric,
you're not working with clay or wood or paper,
and the way that we connect fabric is with seams.
And it produces a ditch on one side
and it produces a ridge on the other.
And remember that some of that bulk will disappear
into the thickness of the batting after you quilt it.
That's it for today.
If you have any other quilting questions,
please send them to info@justgetitdonequilts
and put Quilt Coach in the subject line.
You'll find the links to all the videos
that I've referenced today down in the notes.
Also check out last week's video,
"6 Ways to Keep Your Quilt Sandwich Together".
And if you haven't watched it yet,
I have a great interview with Peter Byrne,
winner of QuiltCon 2020 on Karen's Quilt Circle.
If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up.
Don't forget to subscribe.
You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram,
and Pinterest at Just Get It Done Quilts,
and you can download any of my stash buster pattern
at justgetitdonequilts.com.
So take care and I'll see you next time.