Category — How To Section

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!

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!

Border panic? Quilting condition? Surprise hiccup?  Just what can you say when you approach a section of a wonderfully pieced quilt that has a tricky situation that you didn’t notice before mounting the quilt top on the machine? This quilt has lots of gorgeous fabrics in it, and the blocks and borders were nice and flat when I looked at the quilt laying flat on a table. After I had done a row or two, something on the left side caught my eye. What’s that?!?!?!  Oh my gosh, where did that come from? It was a pucker that appeared overnight when I wasn’t looking!

After rolling back and forth a couple of times, I noticed that there were a few of the sneaky little devils in this border. Funny thing, though…. every other border was perfect.

I decided to stabilize the entire area, because it was too late to take the quilt off of the machine and remove the borders. This is how it looked with a little stitch in the ditch to hold all of the layers in place:

Time to heat up the steam iron. It never ceases to amaze me how much excess I can remove with just a gentle shot of steam. (Hint ….. this works particularly well when the fabrics have not been steamed during the assembly process. I have been asking all of my customers if they used steam during piecing whenever I see an issue with their quilts.)After just two shots of steam, the fabric was already starting to behave better.

Since this border was on the side of the quilt, I decided to wait until the entire quilt was finished before I turned it to deal with this problem. Traveling through the rest of the quilt was easy, and I made sure that everything remained nice and square. After finishing, I turned the quilt and remounted it to work on this border. One more shot of steam now. I kept both hands near the needle as the design stitched, enabling any excess to be evenly distributed. The finished border was perfectly flat in the trouble area:

You can see that the problem did not migrate further down the border:

I would recommend this method for borders — or blocks — that are giving you trouble with puffiness!

This quilt was made with blocks chosen from Quilter’s Cache. You can see the Austin block here, and the layout for the quilt here.

Everyday, people ask me “How do you do it?”

Since I have been using the Vitamix, I have lots of energy and I know that I am doing the best I can for my body every day. My joint pain is gone, and I can stand for 12 hours on a concrete floor without feeling any muscle pain! I’ve decided to endorse Vitamix, and become an affiliate for the company, because I feel very strongly about the nutritional benefits of the product and what it can do for people’s health.

The Department of Health suggests 9 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Sure, you could have a V-8 ….. but why not go with a more natural and healthful approach? I wanted to escape the preservatives that are found in so many foods these days, but I don’t have time (or patience!) to nibble on carrots and lettuce. Diets like that remind me of eating rabbit food, and no one tends to have the discipline necessary to stick with that type of food for very long.

Did you know that all of those itty-bitty seeds on the outside of a strawberry contain pytochemicals? That’s where all the nutrition is hiding. Just chewing a strawberry doesn’t release those phytochemicals into your system because your teeth just aren’t powerful enough to break apart all of those tiny seeds — but the Vitamix has the power to do it! My goal is to squeeze all of the healthy ingredients out of my food, and to be able to do it quickly. Oh — and I want it to taste good too!

I like to start my day with an Emerald Green Smoothie. It has pineapple, grapes, oranges, and spinach in it — yum! And the preparation is easier than you would expect. One slice of fresh pineapple is all you need, and you don’t even need to remove the core! (There’s nutition hiding in that core, just like inside of the strawberry seeds!) Toss in handful of grapes, and don’t even worry about using seedless ones — starting to see the nutritional value AND the convenience? Just remove most of the outer peel on the orange, but don’t get rid of all of the white portion — yes, there’s more nutrtion there too! Toss in a handful of fresh spinach leaves and a few ice cubes and flip the switch. Breakfast is ready in 30 seconds, and you can take it in the car with you. Or, another fast breakfast idea is too put cereal, fruit, milk, and yogurt into the Vitamix! That’s much faster than eating a bowl of cereal and a container of yogurt, and it’s healthy too! If you use fish oil, garlic pills, daily aspirin, or any other daily supplements, just throw them in the Vitamix with your breakfast and you’ll never notice the taste!

At lunch time, you’ll find me making quick soup with the Vitamix. I warm a cup of chicken broth in the microwave, then pour it into the Vitamix. Then I add tomatoes, celery, carrots, peppers, mushrooms — anything I find in the fridge! Sometimes I add left-over chicken from last night’s dinner! Two minutes later, I have steaming hot soup — and I didn’t even have to dirty any pots or pans!

You can create the most healthy baby food possible, quickly and easily. With the rise of childhood diabetes, we all need to be creative in making healthy foods for our children. You can grind whole wheat berries, and knead dough for bread, all in the same container! You can also grind coffee beans, make your own peanut butter, make gravies and sauces without any lumps, and whip up a wonderful salsa in seconds flat! Check out the recipes — they’re amazing!

And clean up time? I add a speck of dishwashing liquid and some warm water to my Vitamix, and then flip in on for about ten seconds. Rinse and done. That’s all there is to it. Really!

Talk about talent! No other kitchen appliance can give you the performance, speed, power, durability, reliability—not to mention health-enhancing benefits—that you get with the Vitamix 5200. This extraordinary machine does the work of 10 kitchen appliances with no attachments! It takes on over 50 “food feats”, including four unique processes that no other single kitchen appliance can handle. The Vitamix 5200 makes juice from whole foods in a minute, cooks soup from scratch without a stove, makes delicious, healthy ice-cream in 30 seconds and even grinds grain and kneads the dough for you in one five-minute operation. And that’s just for starters. Check this page to see all of the “food feats”.

With a thirty day no risk in-home trial, you can be assured of your satisfaction.

And with a 7 year warranty, you will have peace of mind for a long time.

The Vitamix website has lots of testimonials from folks who had health issues, and are now feeling great! You can even read up on weight loss! Be sure to use my affiliate code to buy this machine so you can get FREE SHIPPING in the United States or Canada!

I needed a quick idea for dressing up the kitchen table for autumn. I quilted two yards of fabric, and then added a binding to it for a quick tablecloth.

Then, I used a pattern from One Song Needle Arts to do these placemats. The pattern has cross-hatching built right into the sides of it. It’s easy to decide how large to make your placemats by using the following method:

Open the pattern on your screen in Creative Studio, and use a grid to see the size of the central area. You can use a grid of 1-inch to make the pattern size easy to measure. Decide if you want to adjust the pattern up or down a little bit after studying it on your grid. I cut three strips of fabric 1 1/2 inches wide, and pieced them together for each side. The inner square was cut 14 1/2 inches wide. After piecing the placemat, I basted it to my batting and backing on the machine. Using the head of the machine, I placed a p2p line on the exact edge of my center section of the pieced placemat. I then marked this line as sewn — this is very important to do so your line doesn’t stitch. You can then tweak the design on the screen to line up perfectly with your edges of the center section by sizing with the handles of the design. Click on start, and your design will stitch exactly where you need it to be. Add your binding while you still have the placemat on the machine, and then all you have to do is hand-sew it to the back. Very quick and easy!

What size should I make my next quilt?

Here’s the scenario….. there’s a bed in the quest room that needs a pretty quilt on it before Christmas. But how do you decide what size the quilt needs to be?

You will need to make two decisions before you even pick up your tape measure. First, take a look at the side or bottom of the bed, and decide where you would like the quilt to end in length. How far off of the floor will look nice? Do you have a dust ruffle on this bed?

Quilts can be anywhere from 10 to 20 inches long on the sides, and as you can see, that will make a big difference in the finished measurements of your quilt. If you have a metal tape measure or yard stick handy, stand it up on the floor next to the side of the bed, to get a feel for the overall height. Now, still looking at your tape measure, decide if you would like the sides of the quilt that drape down to measure 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, or 20 inches.

Once that decision is made, we will move on to the decision of whether you would like to tuck the quilt in underneath the pillows, or just have the pillows piled on top of the flat quilt. Having a pillow tuck allowance will add another 10 inches to your overall length measurement.

Here is a handy chart to use in figuring out approximate quilt sizes. You may find a pattern that is just a little larger or smaller than these sizes, and you can decide if you would like to adjust the width of your borders to compensate for the difference, or maybe add or subtract blocks in your design. The chart is shown in three segments here, due to width restrictions. Feel free to print out the chart sections, tape them together on an index card, and keep it in your purse. Or, write to Robin@CandyAppleQuilts.com for a PDF that you can print.  There are two examples below the chart to show you how to use it.

As our first example, let’s choose a child’s twin sized bed. I have decided that I want the twenty-inch drop so that the quilt almost skims the floor. I also decided I would like the extra length required to tuck the quilt under the pillows. From the chart that shows the Twin Mattress, I can go down the left side until I find the 20″ drop and right underneath that line is the 10″ pillow tuck. By running my finger across to the twin size mattress column, it’s easy to see that my quilt should measure 79 x 105 inches. I will be cutting my backing and batting 87 x 113 so the quilt can be finished on a longarm quilting machine.

Let’s try another example. This time, we’ll use a California King sized bed. I want to keep the quilt high up off of the floor, and will not be tucking it under the pillows. A twelve-inch drop should be fine, with no pillow tuck allowance. Run your finger down the left side of the California King chart until you get to the 12″ drop, and then follow straight across to the California King column. You’ll see that the finished quilt should be 96 x 92, and your backing and batting will need to be cut 104 x 100 inches.

You’ll notice that the measurements for the drop on the sides and bottom are only calculated for three sides. That’s because the quilt does not hang down over the top of the bed.

You have a bit of leeway in these measurements, but this will get you started. Don’t worry if things don’t match up perfectly, BUT …. one thing to keep in mind before you get started is shrinkage. If you are using 100% cotton fabrics, and not pre-washing, you may lose a few inches in each direction when the quilt is first laundered. That may be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on your intentions.

Enjoy the process, and as always, enjoy the fabric shopping!

Romantic pinwheels and hand applique

The quilt was made possible with a lot of help from my friends on my Candy Apple Quilts Yahoo group. I asked for everyone to send a 6-inch strip of floral fabric to me so I could have lots of variety. The response was overwhelming! Here are just some of the fabrics that I received:

Lots of florals!

Shades of green for the leaves

I was intrigued with finding a faster way to create all of the half-square triangles that would be needed for the center section, and for the border. Using a Gammill machine with a Statler Stitcher enabled me to do most of the work with the computer! I put a solid white fabric on the machine first. Then, I placed a strip of floral fabric right side down on the white fabric with a pin at each end to hold it in place. Using the computer, I set up all of the sewing for the half square triangles.I then cut the strips apart and ironed the pieces open to create all of the pieces I needed for the pinwheels.

When all of the pinwheels were complete, it didn’t take long to sew them together into the center portion of the quilt.

Each of the fabric strips right sides together

From the various green fabrics, I cut all of the leaves for the appliqued border. All of the applique was done by hand.

Back to the quilting machine with more white fabric, and a pretty lime green. All of the half square triangles were laid out in advance, and sewn row after row, non-stop.

After cutting the rows and blocks apart, I had all of the half square triangles that I needed for the outer border of the quilt!

The only job left was to measure the applique borders and the outer borders, and apply them. I added the binding, sprinkled a few yo-yos on for fun, and it’s done! Click on the images below to see the full-sized pictures.

This pattern for the quilt is available from McCall’s Magazine. For the half square triangle Statler pattern, please email Gary and Linda Schmitz at ewok335@centurytel.net, or check their web site for patterns.

Have you ever seen quilts with wavy borders? The border pieces that you cut according to the charts included with these directions (and other patterns that you have purchased) could be a little bit too long
to be attached to the quilt center that you have completed. Everyone uses a slightly different size seam allowance — and when you multiply the effects of the difference across an entire quilt top, the differences can be significant. If you already have some long border pieces cut and ready to apply to a quilt top, that’s OK for now.  We want them to be a little bit too long to make it easier to use the following process.

You’re probably thinking “Why can’t I just sew a border along one side, and then cut off the excess when I get to the end?” The answer is that you will be stretching your border fabric as you attach it to the quilt top. All of the excess fabric will then end up being a wavy border, which makes it very hard for the person doing the actual quilting to get your borders to lie flat.

Here is a picture of the very bottom of a quilt that is almost finished:

You can see that the majority of this quilt is complete. As the excess fabric has accumulated down the sides of the quilt, it “has to go somewhere”. In other words, it all ends up at the bottom. In this case, pleats were needed to remove the excess fabric — and that’s never the best approach.

Please resist the urge to sit down and sew your borders onto your quilt top without taking a few simple measurements first! You will stretch the edges of your quilt top, and you will end up with wavy borders ,
guaranteed! When you have wavy borders, your quilt is much harder to quilt, it won’t lay flat on a bed or table, and it won’t look right hanging on a wall. Just a little bit of extra measuring at this stage will
save you a lot of frustration later.

We will be following that old advice “Measure twice, and cut once”. You don’t want to make any mistakes here. First, make sure your quilt center has been neatly pressed, and that all seam allowances are flat
on the back. Lay your quilt on a large flat surface (a floor comes in handy here, but a large table is even better!) and use a metal tape measure. Lay the tape measure on the quilt in the center, measuring from top to bottom. Make a note of this measurement. This is the number you will use to cut two of your side
strips to the proper length.

Use your tape measure to see how this center measurement differs from the measurement along the edge. You may be surprised to see the amount of difference between the two numbers!

Pin the two side strips to each side of the quilt, making sure the fabric is distributed evenly. Place a pin in the center, and one at each end. Then keep adding pins until you feel that all ease is distributed evenly. Sew the border strips in place. Press flat.

Now lay the tape measure in the opposite direction (going from side to side), but make sure it’s in the center of the quilt, not along the edge. Make a note of this measurement. You might want to check again to see how different this center measurement is than one taken at the edge!

Cut your two remaining borders to the proper measurement, and pin as directed above, easing in any fullness.

Repeat this process for the rest of your borders, if your quilt has additional pieces.The more borders you have on your quilt, the more you will love using this method after your project is complete! I’ve received countless phone calls after teaching this method, and everyone of them is from someone who is now confident when it comes to this final step.  Too often we are in a hurry by the time we get to the end of the piecing process, and just want to get it done. It’s worth a few extra minutes when it comes to the long life of your quilt!

No more wavy borders!