Category: Hot Tips

Hot Tips

Hot Tip Tuesday #5, Fused Scraps

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With yesterday being a snow day here in the midwest, today has felt like Monday all day instead of Tuesday!  Today I went Christmas shopping and to lunch with my college student daughter between her finals.  These rare solo times spent with my kids are priceless! It wasn’t until I was making dinner that I realized I needed to post another hot tip.

The tip I’d like to share with you today has to do with my love of fusible applique.  It’s one of my favorite quilting techniques to perform and with it I get lots of scraps.  Being the frugal/creative quilter that I am, I hate to throw away the negative shapes that are left when I cut out the shapes I need for a project.  I’ve even used some of these negative shapes to start a new project before.

 

Look at all this beatuiful black fused fabric that is left after cutting my new cool shape out!  I removed the paper from my fused design so you can see the scraps better.

 Many years ago I started saving these fused scraps in a big Longaberger basket that was sitting in my sewing room without a purpose.

Not only have I saved fabric, it comes in handy if I need a scrap of green or black or red…  I don’t have to go to the effort of fusing a piece of fabric just for a small piece I want to add to a project.

What’s also nice is I’m putting a big basket to work, yet it looks nice nestled under a table in my living room that is adjacent to my sewing room.

 Perhaps this will spark an idea of creativity in your sewing room.

Until next time,

Susan

Hot Tips

Hot Tip Tuesday #4, Sewing Buttons on by Machine

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Quilters are constantly commenting on how I get so much done.  Or they see my samples and are blown away by the details and precision and think that the miles of buttonhole stitch on my applique (my very favorite of stitches) is done by hand.  Well, as most of you know, it’s hard to take such a compliment without telling on ourselves.  It seems my standard issue reply is always “Oh no, it’s all by machine.  I even sew on my buttons by machine.”  To which the reply is mostly, “No way!”  Well, yes way, and today I’ve decided to illustrate just how easy this is.

You’ll need a button and some Scotch tape and whatever you want to sew the button to.

Position the button where you want it sewn, and apply a piece of tape to amply cover the button and secure it on both sides to the fabric.

Set sewing machine’s stitch length to “0”.

Set stitch width, this will be different with different machines.  I set my Bernina 930 (best machine the whole wide world) to “3”.  I’ve found over the years that most buttons have this as standard.  Unless the button is very tiny or very large this setting is exactly what it needs.  You’ll want to verify this for your machine in the next step.

I like to use my open toe applique foot. Probably the most important point in this process (and the blurriest of my photos) is to hold down the thread as you start to sew.  First with hand on the fly-wheel turn it toward you getting the setting for the stitch width set.  After you’ve gone back and forth into both holes twice, use the foot pedal and sew 8-9 times total.  Yes, I usually grimace as I’m doing this although is just a reflex from breaking so many needles in my sewing history!

Leave a long thread tail and cut threads and remove tape.

 

 Tie a square knot on top the button and then on the back to secure it.  Trim all the threads.

Here’s the finished button.  This is the snowman from one of my latest patterns.  You can see the whole cute little guy here and purchase the pattern too!

See all the buttonhole stitches here?  I love the way my machine applies them so evenly.  And the Sulky 12 wt. cotton thread is my absolute favorite!

I hope you give this time-saving technique a try.

Until next time,

Susan

Hot Tips

Hot Tip Tuesday #3, Marking your Tools

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Ever go to a quilting class or get-together and everyone shows up with the exact same tools?  Birds of a feather…

My mom taught me many years ago to use fingernail polish to mark with.  It’s more permanent than any permanent pen that I’ve found. 

You could write your name with it I guess, but just a dot (I use the same color for all my tools) and at a glance I know it’s mine.

Remember, send me a tip at SuznQuilts@aol.com and if I use it for one of my Hot Tip Tuesdays, I’ll send you a free pattern.

Until next time,

Susan

Hot Tips

Hot Tip Tuesday #2, Pressing

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Have you ever started making a quilt with multiple strips sewn together and the farther you sewed the more crooked your block became?  My first quilt (first to begin, still not finished) was a sampler quilt with a rail fence block.  It’s a 12″ block, that’s made up of 4, 6″ blocks which are made up of strips.  Luckily another quilt caught my eye, I dropped the sampler to make it and so on and so on and shall we say the rest is history? Somewhere along the way I learned to press correctly and my blocks are accurate and straight.  Thank goodness I did or who knows where my quilting experience would have ended. Fortunately quilting has many tricks and techniques that can make your quilting perfect if that’s what you’re after!

What I have learned is this:

pressing with iron

After you’ve sewn the scant 1/4″ seam, take strip set to the ironing board and press it with a dry iron just as it was sewn. NEVER slide the iron down the strip as you press, but rather pick up the iron each time. Next:

Fingerpressing

Open strip set and finger press seam to one side.  Next:

With tip of iron, press seam to one side, pressing seam open with fingers and iron as you move along seam.  Most importantly don’t slide iron, but rather pick it up and move it down the strip.  Sliding the iron distorts the strips and makes for crooked strip sets.   Lastly, the test:

Lay the pressed strip set on gridded cutting mat and use ruler to check for accuracy. The strip set should be straight and measure accurately.  Too large of a seam allowance will make the strip set too small and too small of a seam allowance will make the strip set too large.  Neither of these scenarios is good for placing blocks into a quilt.  If you have trouble getting an accurate scant 1/4″ seam allowance you can try my friend Celine’s Perfect Piecing Seam Guide to help set up your machine.

Remember, if you have a tip, send it to me at SuznQuilts@aol.com and if I use it in a Hot Tip Tuesday post, I’ll send you a free pattern!

Until next time,

Susan

Hot Tips, Quilt Shopping Out & About

Hot Tip-Selvage Signatures in full force!

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I’ve been doing some re-stocking in the fabric department here at Suzn Quilts.  I used some fabric in my new pattern samples and I’ve been running a bit low.  A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, so…

I fell in love with some of the new Wild Rose Collection by Blackbird Designs last week.  Then Monday I fell in love with some Christmas photos that were full of nothing but reds & creams, so…

yesterday I stocked up on some much needed Glorious Reds, and a bit more of my new favorite Christmas background.  I can really get caught up in great backgrounds. To me thery’re kind of like a painter’s canvas.  They set the tone of your whole quilt. 

After I got home and checked messages from all my technical sources and got an order ready for shipping, I sat right down with my Sharpie and gave each piece of fabric their “selvage signature”.  Don’t want Mr. Murphy (Murphy’s law, you know it’s going to happen) dancing a jig when I run out of one of these and need a bit more.  This little exercise also gives me an excuse to refold and stack my new pretties.  I’m pretty sure the only reason I quilt is to use up some of the beautiful fabrics before the stacks fall over and smother my family members!

Until next time,

Susan

Hot Tips

Hot Tip Tuesday #1, Selvage Signatures

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Does anyone out there besides me like great tips?  I have all kinds of quilting tips in my sewing room and in my little noggin. So, I’ve decided to start “Hot Tip Tuesday” and share them with you.

Since I know there are a lot more very good tips out there, I’m also going to open it up to you, my blog readers, to email me your tips SuznQuilts@aol.com If I use your tip I’ll send you a free pattern!

Tip #1, I don’t know if any of you have this problem, but I buy quilting fabric here, there, and everywhere and perhaps while it’s aging, I forget where I bought it. Then, when I do finally put it into a project I find that I bought a tad too little and want to buy more.  In my experience, it’s easiest to call the shop that at least at one point in time had the fabric.  Now, every time I buy new fabric, I write with a Sharpie on the selvage where I bought it and when.  I bought these two fabrics in Tennessee while on vacation with my family last summer. Yellow fabric is from Susan’s Mountain Stitches & the black is from The Cherry Pit.

This tip comes to you with a warning, it’s not dummy proof!  A year or so ago, I used a fabric that I’d labeled “EBT   ’08”.  Well, I had enough fabric, but a friend wanted some after she saw my project.  Do you know I could not, for the life of me, remember what my stupid note “EBT   ’08” meant?  It was months later that it dawned on me that I had bought it at Eleanor Burns’ tent sale in Paducah during the quilt show in ’08!!!  So, to expand on this tip, be sure to write yourself a note that you will understand more than a week after the purchase!

Until next time,

Susan