Sunday, November 7, 2010

What Have You Learned about Quilting Today?

Quilting is an enlightening process, a somewhat spiritual process. When you start a project you must learn about the person you are quilting for, learn what design, pattern and fabric would suit that person, and learn the steps to accomplish the goal of creating a personalized quilt.
    
For instance today this Sassy Quilter learned two very important lessons. When making a T-Shirt quilt (a quilt cut from T-Shirts), the fabric should be prepared by washing without fabric softener. If you use fabric softener on T-Shirt material, the adhesive stabilizer does not adhere to the fabric as well. So, first step to start this quilt is to wash all T-Shirts in the laundry without fabric softener. Then, cut each T-Shirt in a square larger than the finished square - say 15 1/2 inches. Cut each iron-on stabilizer piece the same size - 15 1/2 inches. Then iron each stabilizer piece to the back of each T-Shirt square using a hot, non-steam iron with paper covering over your ironing board (as to not stick adhesive to your ironing board) AND using a press cloth on top (as to not stick adhesive to your iron). Always good to know BEFORE you start a new sticky project.

The second tip I learned today was how to make a fan-patterned quilt out of scrap material (for the fan piece) and how to arrange it. Wisconsin Public Television features quilting shows every Saturday morning. Thank you WPT! We learn something new every week from your programming. I am not going to start a Amish-style fan quilt today, but I've taken notes for a future quilt.

Simple tips about quilting are learned each day. What have you learned about quilting today?

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