Posts from — March 2010

I have a love/hate relationship with Minkee — but mostly love! Leslie brought two quilts recently that both have Minkee involved. One of the quilts had a Minkee backing, and the other quilt featured Minkee on the front for applique fabrics.

Minkee can be tricky to work with on a longarm machine. Keeping the stretch parallel to the rollers will help to keep the stretchiness of a wild Minkee backing  tamed. Also, keeping the side clamps very loose —- so loose that you will think that the quilt top looks rather baggy —- will also help you to avoid having the backing shrink up when you remove the quilt from the machine. The most important tip I like to pass along is: REMEMBER NOT TO ROLL THE QUILT TOO TIGHTLY.  If that’s the only tip you remember, you will avoid a lot of headaches.

Backings pieced from Minkee should be avoided if possible. Because of the thickness of the Minkee, the seam on the backing can show through to the front of the quilt. Also, it’s a bit difficult to piece Minkee without having it slide around, causing a backing that looks square on the table to look like this on the machine:

If this backing had been pieced out of any other fabric but Minkee, I would have removed it from the machine and done the piecing over. As it was, I held my breath and let the extra fabric be absorbed by the dense snowflakes that would be quilted on it.

If you have any frustrations during the process of working with Minkee, just slide your hand across the wonderful fabric and you will be guaranteed to smile!

If you would like to experiment with a little touch of Minkee, but don’t want to use it for the entire quilt, consider using it for your appliqué fabric. Leslie brought over a quilt that had adorable elephants appliquéd on it, and she used various pieces of Minkee as the appliqué fabric. She used flat Minkee, striped, nubby… a little bit over everything. The elephants look so cute with the little bows on their heads!

Ellen brought this quilt in to me the other day, and she had the perfect vision of how she wanted it quilted! Her perfect piecing made my job pure pleasure. We used the stand-alone feature of Creative Studio software to plan out her vision, and then executed her ideas to reflect her wonderful choices!

I did a little research on the women of Gees Bend and found their web site, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, Quilters Collective History, here.

According to the web site, “The women of the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective all live in the area of Rehoboth and Boykin, Alabama.Throughout much of the twentieth century, making quilts was considered a domestic responsibility for women in Gee’s Bend. As young girls, many of the women trained or apprenticed in their craft with their mothers, female relatives, or friends; other quilters, however, have been virtually self-taught. Women with large families often made dozens upon dozens of quilts over the course of their lives.”

You can meet these amazing women here.

I look forward to seeing more of these quilts! Be sure to look at the various pictures so you can appreciate Ellen’s quilt!

Karen brought over a quilt top with a real “Go Green” theme to it.

She found the fabrics at Timeless Treasures, and I’m sure her daughter will love this one! The backing fabric needed to be pieced together, so I thought I would take pictures along the way so you could see how I used glue to make the process much easier! There were motifs and lettering on the backing fabric that had to match up perfectly, and the glue is the secret to doing this project. Here’s the process:

Fold one of your pieces of fabric under 1/2 inch, and press, being
careful not to stretch the folded area as you press. Set this piece on top of
your other fabric piece, matching the pattern on both sides.

Working in small areas, use a small line of Elmer’s School Glue on the folded portion of your fabric. Squeeze a line of glue approx. 10-12 inches long on your folded seam allowance, then set the fabric in place on top of the flat area. Press with a warm iron (no steam). This will set the glue, and keep things from sliding around. When you are sure that the glue is dry, you can turn back the edge of the fabric to check on everything. It should look like this:

If you used a little too much glue, some may have leaked through to other
layers.

Don’t worry! It’s easy to run your finger along the area, and gently pull the
glue apart.

If your seam is long, you may want to add a few pins along the area before
you carry your fabrics to the sewing machine. The glue is fairly strong, but
not enough to support a lot of weight.

After stitching the entire seam line, run your finger along the glued area to
open the seam.

As you can see, the glue did a great job of holding the layers together.

Press the seam open.

The selvage edges must be removed from both pieces of the backing fabric
before putting the quilt backing on the machine. You can do one side at a
time with a rotary cutter, or just use scissors.

Turn the backing over to the right side, and press.

The glue really helps with the process!

Square both ends of the backing, and you’re ready to quilt!