Quilting Tips – Tidbits of Information
Our grandmothers used the time when they were in the front room (or parlor) sitting around the quilting frame to share all their time-honored quilting tips. Today quilters head for the internet. And here can be found endless tips, from how to keep quilt pieces from raveling in the laundry, to how to iron the pieces. The more tips you know and use, the better quilter you will become.
Quilting organizations and quilting retreats are two more good places where the tips are exchanged. Soon it will be you passing along the tip to the newcomers instead of the other way around.
Learning through Quilting Tips
Regardless of how easy a process may appear to be, through the years American ingenuity has always turned up new ways to accomplish the same things. This concept applies especially to quilters as each one struggles with some aspect of quilting. Tips will then emerge as a means of making the craft easier. For example, if you are having a problem determining the grain in a fabric, turn the piece over. Usually the print on the backside is fainter and the direction of the thread is easier to see.
Many quilters like to pre-wash the fabric before turning it into a work of art. But some have found that a washing machine is not too friendly to a new piece of cloth. The small threads at the edges seem to get longer and more tangled. If tossed into the dryer with all the threads loose, they will really be tied together. This pulls the fabric into unimaginable shapes. One of the quilting tips used to eliminate this is to cut off a small, triangular piece from each of the four corners of the cloth before placing it in the washing machine. This little trick of clipping about a half-inch triangle should end the binding thread nightmare.
Another of the quilting tips involves using the iron when pressing a seam allowance. Before you press the allowance to one side, set the iron flat and leave it there. Don’t move it around. The seam will set smooth without the puckers showing from being sewn.
Practice for Quilters
When someone starts a new hobby or even a new job, they usually take part in some kind of training. Even after they are good at it, they practice to advance or at least maintain their ability. It is no different with quilting. While many quilters have enjoyed their craft for years, quilting tips always seem to help. If one of the new quilting tips involves using your quilting machine, it’s good advice to always practice on scrap cloth first. There is no shame in having a few scraps lying around on which to practice a new stitch for the first few times.
Practically everyone has some sort of warm up routine they go through regardless of their activity. Runners, sports athletes, even many typists have a routine to limber their muscles and minds to prepare for the task at hand. Many quilters use a flannel baby blanket to run a few stitches through their machine to warm up and be ready to work before putting their expensive fabric under the needle.