NQC LIVE! October 2019

And welcome to this month's live event for National Quilters Circle. Once again, we're joined by Andrea Smith. So thanks for being here, Andrea. Glad to be here with you guys. Of course, we're glad to have you. So of course, you're here for the next hour to answer all of our quilting questions. And of course I know people are going to start submitting those as soon as that they think of them. But if you don't know, we are in the middle of a challenge right now that you are actually hosting for us. So I thought you can kind of give us a little bit, sort of a little brief recap, if someone is just hearing about this challenge and then sort of like where we're at in it. Well, it's the Happy Block Swap Quilt Along and it was designed to be a swap. So you would get a buddy and you would make four of your, four assigned blocks and you would make two of each and your buddy would have four assigned blocks and they would make two of each. And when it comes to week five, you would swap your blocks. And everybody has a bonus block. Last Friday, everyone got their bonus block. So it's not too late to start 'cause all of those block patterns are still on the National Quilters Circle blog post. So if you go to the current week, you scroll down to the bottom and it has all of the previous blog posts. So if you want to make that solo, you can just make one at each block. So you would make one of each of quilter ones, one of each of quilter twos, and then you would make that bonus block. And then this Friday, well next Friday, the 25th, you will be getting instructions for finishing your quilt top and quilting, basting and binding it. Perfect, so if somebody is, 'cause I know a lot of people do this, working ahead a bit, and going to sort of start putting theirs together maybe before they get the instructions from you, what is it that you're going to provide in the finishing instructions and are there things that people can sort of tweak and change if they want to? Well, the finishing instructions are basically kind of like a suggestion if you want your quilt to turn out like mine. So mine has a smaller sashing and the sides are a little bit larger, the border is a little bit larger. So if you want to make it your own, you can change up your sashing, you could make your sashing a different color. It gives a specific amount of fabric for that sashing. You could put cornerstones in yours. If you're working ahead, I would suggest ironing all of your blocks, pressing them, so that you can measure them and make sure they're all the same size. Trying not to trim off any of your points when you square those up. The finishing instructions are helpful if you don't know any way to go about putting your quilt top together. 'Cause I know there's a lot of beginners the group. So if you don't want to wait for them, I see people are working ahead. But if you need those, definitely I will be going over them Friday at 11 o'clock Pacific Daylight Savings Time, in a live video in the group, the Facebook group. Yes, perfect. So if anyone is unfamiliar so this is the National Quilters Circle Facebook page that you might be watching this on. I know there's a couple of places that you can be for this. but that's NQC Quilt Block Challenge and that's where you'll be in, I'll be doing a quick one that day too to talk about some fun Silky Products because they are our sponsor. And so fun things you can use for quilting. So we have a couple of questions that we have submitted earlier. And one of them I think is a perfect one to start. It's kind of about the live event itself, but it says do you do them in the evenings for those of us who work during the day? And so I just want to say that if you're not able to watch this video live, it is still going to be available later on, you can watch it at any time and you can pre-submit questions. So we always sort of put these out ahead of time so you can email us questions, post them on the Facebook page. And then when you watch this back, whenever you're able to, Andrea will have answered your question. So it's perfect. Yes, all right, so our next one here, how do you make corners on a quilt? What do you mean by that? Okay, that's what I was thinking. I wanted to see what your first thought was. My first thought was like mitered corners on- Are they part of a binding maybe, the corners? That's what I'm assuming. Okay. It's kind of hard to explain without a visual, but say, okay, so I have a strip of fabric. So when I make my binding, I like to do it so it is doubled up. And so you would, pretend like this is your quilt. You would sew this to your quilt. And then when you get to that corner, I like to sew to the front of my quilt. And then when you get to the corner, you stop. Let's see if I can do it. Let me lay it down. So you stop at that corner about a fourth inch from the corner. I like to do a fourth inch seam. And then you fold it up so it is parallel with the side of your quilt. You fold that down like this, you can see that. So you got a little flap here, and then I just start a fourth inch and go straight down the side of my quilt. And then once that's all secure, when you open it up and flip it around, you do the same thing on that side. You will press one side all the way to the edge and then flap it over so it kind of gives a little corner in the corner. Is that what you do Ashley? That's basically right. Yeah, yeah. That's perfect. See, I love to sort of spring things on you. You already just have props you can pull. So that's perfect. I was sewing this morning, so it's all still on my table. I love it, no, that's exactly how I do it too. So if I am going to hand stitch it to the back, then yeah, I'll sew it by machine to the front, flip it to the back and then hand stitch it on the back. And then if I'm going to just completely stitch the entire thing by machine, I'll go from the back first, flip to the front and then to the front. Yeah, so, but other than that, the techniques are exactly the same, love it. All right, we have a question here. Monica says she only has three weeks of the challenge, she wants to know if she missed a week? Yes, it sounds like you did. So week one was blocked A and B. Week two was blocked C and D, Week three, what, C and B, E and F. Four was G and H. And then week five, which we just got on Friday, was the bonus block. So what you can do is go to that blog post, if you're in that Facebook group, it's in the announcement section, you click on post, and that'll take you to the blog post and then scroll down to the bottom and it'll have links to the previous weeks and you click on whichever one that you're missing and then you'll find the blocks there. Yes, absolutely. And that's the great thing about whatever week you happen to find, so I know they're all in the announcement section, but say you click on the wrong week or you click on fabric requirements or something like, at the bottom, you can always get to every other page off of each page. So yes, you should definitely be able to find it. So yes, Monica, thank you for your question. Anyone else has questions, definitely go ahead and post those in there. We have another one here from Darla. She says, I don't have a clue on how to pick fabric for a quilt, any tips? Sometimes if you get a quilt pattern, sometimes they'll have suggested colors. I like to go with, if you like prints, I like to go with one print and say, if you're not using a Fat Quarter bundle, if you're just going from scratch, like say I picked out this and I wanted to match all my fabrics to this, I would just go through the fabric store, if you're online, and try to get fabrics that match this, have the same colors. If you do all print, sometimes that can be a little busy. So a lot of times I will go with a couple of prints and then I'll go solids. Or like, I will go with a solid background fabric, that way it will make your quilt pop. And then there's a lot of time you can get fabric collections. So if you were to go to your local fabric shop, quilter's shop, or if you go online to, there's a lot of fabric stores online. They will have fabric collections and a designer actually designs all those fabrics to go together. So that makes it a little easier to pick fabrics. So that's what I typically do. What do you typically do Ashley? I'm similar. So I am sometimes afraid of color, and I don't like a whole lot of print, so I tend to stick to solid colors, but I will sort of pick one main print to go with that. So I'll take a main print and then on the salvage edge, there's all the little circles that are the colors that are in it. And that's what I'll take to the wall of solids at my quilt shop and pick those solids from there. But, so do you have like a number in your head of, okay, I only want five different colors or seven different colors or is there a limit you sort of put on yourself in terms of how many? It all depends on the quilt. So like if I'm going scrappy, a lot of Fat Quarter bundles have 10 to 12, but if I'm going with solids, I usually don't do more than four to five. Like if I'm doing color throughout yardage, I'm using yardage, I will go like four to five colors. But it also just all depends on the design of the quilt. Some quilts need those extra colors, but sometimes I just like a minimal amount of color. So I would say four to five if I'm designing the quilt pattern. Yeah, yeah, I'm similar. I don't want color overload or I don't want it to, I don't know look too busy when I look at it. All right, perfect. Our next one here, Bev says, when putting on borders, do you do the sides first or the top and bottom first? I usually do the top and bottom because those are a smaller piece and then I will do the side pieces. I dunno if that's how you're supposed to do it but that's how I do it. I don't know if there's like a specific way. I mean, with a pattern there will be, obviously even with your finishing instructions you've provided, which ones go on first. 'Cause one of them has to go on first. I'm actually the exact opposite of you though. So I do the sides first and then the top and bottom, I think mostly because, especially on a big sort of chunky border, I feel like the top should just be one solid, I don't know, that's just how my mind works. But I definitely think it's personal preference. 'Cause a lot of times you're either going to do what they call a long vertical, which should be how you do it, or long horizontal, or you can have corner squares, or you can do miter quarters or any number of different border that, yeah, it doesn't really matter which one you do first. Yes, all right, next one here, this actually goes along with the binding that we already talked about, but Tina wants to know specifically what your preferred binding method is, front to back or back to front and machine binding or hand sewed if you had to pick. My preferred is so into the front of the quilt, wrapping it and hand binding. I've tried machine binding a couple of times and it just didn't turn out how I like it. It didn't turn out as pretty as if I were to hand bind it. I'm sure if I practiced more, it would look better. But I kind of like sitting and watching a movie with the kids and hand binding at the same time, it's kind of relaxing. So I would, I think like that, once my son gets a little older, he's not quite at the like sit and have a relaxing movie night age yet. So he's more of the I don't want pokey things around your face. All right, our next one here, Sherri says, why is there sometimes one 16th of an inch difference in the measuring tape from the different quilting rulers I have no matter how hard I try to cut exactly on my measurements, my end product is off. Do you know why some rulers differ from one to another? I don't know, I think that's a little crazy, but yeah I would recommend using at least the same brand ruler, because everybody's measurements are different. And so if you stick with all Fiskar, or all Olaf or all Omnigrip, your size will probably end up a lot better than if you used one Olaf, one Fiskar, one Omnigrip, you know. So I'm not sure why they're not all the same, but it's kind of frustrating. Yes, I agree, I have another random side question, have you seen the movie "Frozen?" The first one, I have not seen the second one yet. 'Cause it's all Olfa and you're saying Olaf, which makes me think of the movie "Frozen" because that's the name of the character. Is it Olaf? It's Olfa. Olfa, I'm sorry. All right, it's Olfa or if you wanna put in movie theme, it's Olaf. There you go. All right, perfect- It's still early here, okay. I'm sorry, that's true, it's afternoon for me. All right, our next one here, making my first quilt, queen size bed sprit. I have a regular Brother sewing machine, and I'm wondering how I'm going to quilt this. Is it going to fit on my machine? It could, it all depends on how big your throat is. My throat on my machine isn't too big, it's about this big. So when I do larger quilts, what I like to do is roll up the quilts really tight from one side to the center. And then I start quilting from the center out. You always want to do center out, but my easy go to is straight line quilting because that is really easy for larger quilts. My sister actually just made a king size quilt for her bed just on a regular domestic Janome. And it wasn't like a super huge throat, but that's what she did. She rolled it halfway and she did straight line from top to bottom and out to the side and then out to that side. So you can roll it really tight, especially if you're using a cotton batting, that doesn't have a lot of loft until you wash the quilt. A really thick puffy polyester might be a little more difficult. But I think you can do it, just roll it really tight. Yes, I agree. So rolling is definitely a good technique. And we have another instructor who I believe did a video for us on NationalQuiltersCircle.com, and she has more of a tuck and push it under technique, but she does show how she sets it up in terms of if you don't have a really big table that you're working on, how you can sort of use another table next to you or even your ironing board so you make sure that not only can you get this quilt under your machine, but that the rest of the quilt isn't falling off the table and pulling away. So check those videos out too, but definitely yeah, rolling or just stuffing it under there. Stuffing it through. Yeah, all right, our next one here, Danielle says, have you ever done a variation of one color in a pattern to make a shading or a block look like it's getting darker the further it goes back? I wonder how would you pick the pieces of fabric so the colors were two colors? Well, one of my recent quilts that I made for my nephew was kind of an ombre, the background and it was like, it started light, medium, and then dark gray, the background, and then the flying geese blocks were dark to light, going the opposite way. It's kind of, I guess what you're saying, what I typically do, which I actually have handy, a lot of fabric companies, manufacturers, will have a solids book. And so what I do is I just open it up. What I did was I opened it up and they tell you all the solids they have, and you can just pick that way going from light to dark. And then it would kind of give it a gradual fading color. I know Moda has a book, I think Paint Brush Fabrics do as well, most do, but I think Kona has one of the largest amounts, they have like 340 different colors, yeah, 300 and something colors. So that's what I do. Just kind of what I would do. What would you do? Yeah. Similar, so I guess I've only ever gotten a book like that a couple of times, I guess, I just get never got around. I like to go and see the fabric in the fabric store. So obviously it's going to be limited, because my quilt shop probably doesn't carry every single color. But I would do the same, just pick them that way. Or I have done one in the past where I actually bought an ombre fabric and then sort of fussy cut my from like the different sections of it. But that's definitely, I mean, I bought like double the amount of fabric requirement, because you kind of have to, so your way is probably better and more cost-effective than my way. I usually shop online just because, yeah, the selection at my local quilt shop, they don't have as many solids in the same brand. So she has several Moda's and several Kona Cotton's, And so I kind of like to stick, in one quilt, I like to stick with the same brand of solids. So that's why I usually go to that. And some shops have like all 340 colors, so it can be easier to shop that way sometimes. Yeah, that would be a huge shop. I would be a little jealous of someone who has that. All right, next one, when you press seams, do you hold both fabrics apart while you press, or do you press just straight down and hope the seams don't have any little folds in them? If I'm piecing a block, I will set my seam, so that means when it's still folded over, set your seam, and then I actually finger press it open to one side. I don't, the only time I will press my seam open is if there's a little bulk which is very rarely. So I usually just finger press and open and then I press on the top of the block. Because yeah, if you just sorta just like slam it down, you might not get a straight seam and it might not be all open. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that goes for either open or to one side and definitely setting your seam first, I do that as well. And then I always do, so I'll press on the wrong side first to make sure the seam allowance is right, left, open, however I want it. And then I'll flip it over and do it again from the right side to make sure that there aren't those extra little- Because not everybody's seams are perfectly straight sometimes, you know? So if you do that, your seam will appear straight, you know? Yes, yes, absolutely and that's what we're going for, looks are important here. All right, our next one here, Sarah says, what is the best domestic machine for a long-arm machine on a Grace frame for like the throat space? So that is one, so we do have another video on, yeah, so on National Quilters Circle, it's actually on National Sewing Circle as well, we did a little sponsored video with a Grace frame, which you can fit pretty much any, I'm going to say any, but you can get us a better idea of brands and things that they would recommend. Obviously they have their own machines too that fit on their frames. But I believe it's up to a 19 inch throat space that you can accommodate on a domestic machine, on a Grace frame. So obviously the larger your machine, the larger the space, the more you're going to be able to quilt because it does still have the bars that go on it just like you would on a long-arm. So if you have a throat space that's this big, right, and the bar takes up this much space of it, you can only do say three inches of quilting before you have to roll your quilt and and move it. Versus if you have a machine that gives you more space, then that's better. So yeah, up to 19 inches, and the bigger you can go, I think the better so you don't have to move it as often. Our next one here, Holly gave some tips here for the ombre effect. She says, pick out some fabric choices you think might work, lay them in a row, overlapping them, and then take a black and white photo of the gripping. This will review the value, revealing the lightest to darkest. That's a great tip, is that something you've ever done? No, but I've seen it a lot. A lot of people have done that and that would work out great if you're just doing, if you're not going with solids and you're going with ombre like prints too. Because sometimes it might seem like a print is darker than another, but until you do it in a black and white, that really shows the differences. Yes, yes, absolutely, I agree. And I know they have, so I've done it definitely with my phone, 'cause it's really easy to just put a filter on it or change it to black and white. But I do know they have, I'm blanking on the exact name of them, but those fancy red glasses that you can put on and those also kind of do the same effect. And I know that some quilt shops just have them. I know my local quilt shop has them in the checkout lane as one of those last minute things you can pick up. So I know they're fairly inexpensive. So if you aren't someone who always has their phone on them while you're sewing to be able to take that picture and do that, consider investing in those little glasses, yes. All right, our next one here, Blanca says, good morning, when I'm quilting, should I use the same thread on the top in the needle as well as in the bobbin? I typically do. I know that some people will do the color that's on the back and the color that's on the top. I like to do it just in case little bits of that background bobbin thread shows on the top. If your tension is right, it shouldn't show on the top, but if you're using a black fabric on top and a white background, white fabric on your backing, those little bits of white may show through on the top. And so I typically will go with the same color thread on both sides when I'm quilting, what do you do? Yes, I am similar, sorry, it took me a second to get my screen to pop back up here. I am similar in that. I don't want to say it comes out of laziness sometimes, but it kind of does in that when I'm winding my bobbins, I usually want to wind them with the thread that I already have on because I don't wanna go find a bobbin thread or do something like that. So yeah, most of the time, whether I am piecing, quilting, sewing something else, I am using the same thread, the same color, same everything in the needle and the bobbin. Unless I'm using some crazy specialty thread that you shouldn't use in your bobbin, but if you're just using your standard cotton or all purpose, yeah, I definitely use one in the same in both places. She has another question here, can a finished quilt be ironed or not? I don't see why it couldn't be ironed. As long as it's cotton, I know you had said it in a different video that yours had metal on your fabric and when you ironed it, the metal came off the fabric. So you may want to make sure it's not that kind of fabric, but it should be able to if it's a 100% cotton, right? Yeah, yeah, that was definitely, yeah, it was one of those Christmas fabrics that looked amazing on the bolt, and then as soon as I, yeah, just, I ran into that when I was piecing. So I feel like if you're going to have any issues with your fabric, you're going to figure it out when you're piecing. So as long as you were able to press it when you pieced, you should be good to press it when you iron, it's not gonna hurt- Tabletop or before like a run. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Sarah wants to know if you have a book, Andrea? No I do not. Do you have any plans of writing one in the future? I don't have any plans as of right now, I do have a lot of quilt patterns and I have a blog, but I don't have a book yet. I'm fairly new. I started writing quilts in, quilt patterns in the end of 2016. So I'm fairly new to this. Well, we're going to just keep monitoring you. And as soon as you decide to start writing that book, you let us all know. All right, the next one here, I have tension issues on my machine whenever I try free motion quilting, any suggestions? And I know you don't have a whole lot of free motion quilting background, but how would you address any tension issues in piecing, quilting, or just sewing in general? If you are having tension issues in any method of quilting, I know sometimes I have in the past with straight-line quilting, what I do is I get like basically I make a fake quilt top with the batting and the fabric on both sides. And I just test it out to see, okay, if it's pulling too much on one side, change the tension and see if it gets better. It's just kind of a trial and error, I know in, that's just, you know, just make a sandwich basically. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That is something I like to do sort of practice blocks, or even sometimes if I have say a little scrap of say. six inch square, I have something left over that I know I'm not going to necessarily use, I'll just kind of keep a stack of those so I can use it for testing out tension issues with quilting but also just if you're messing around with stitches and anything like that, testing stich quality. So I always just have those little sample things that you can use for that. We have quite a few videos on National Quilters Circle and National Sewing Circle on troubleshooting tension issues. And I know we have a couple of videos specifically done by one of our old instructors, Heather Thomas, who did one on tension issues when free motion quilting. So that is on National Quilters Circle, and you can find that, as well as other great videos on more free motion quilting tips. Danielle wants to know, when you're quilting a quilt with a black on top and bottom, how would you pick your quilting pattern to use? I guess I usually, just go with what you think will look good, I guess. I would use, if you have a majority of black, you might want to use black on top and bottom, but the pattern is like totally up to you. If you want to echo your pattern, if you want do straight line quilting, you want to do free motion, it's really up to you. Yep, yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of times you sort of have to, I like to try and think ahead, so right now where we're at with the challenge, where I have several different blocks, and I'm kind of trying to think through, okay, here's what I might do on this block. Your entire idea might change as soon as you see that quilt assembled. So, it'll sort of speak to you. But so Danielle is saying, oh, here, clarification, I probably read that wrong. Danielle says there's two different colors, a different color on the top than on the bottom. So how we were saying, say, if you had, black on the top and white on the bottom and we were saying use the same color thread, which one would you go towards? I would go towards whatever's on the top of your quilt, because that's what's going to be seen mostly, you know, if it's on a bed or on a couch, you're not going to be really looking at the back as much as the top, so go with your top colors. Yeah, yeah, and that's, I think go with, same thing, or if you are, say the top of your quilt is black and you want your quilting to sort of hide or disappear and you just kind of want to see the effect of the quilting, but not the stitching, then, yeah, that's when you'd match your thread to your quilt. But if you do definitely want to see your quilting, like your whole plan with that quilt is to have black fabric and some stark whites quilting, then just do white and white and you know it's going to look really cool on the top of your quilt. So that's always an option as well. Our next one here, Sherri wants to know, how often do you change your rotary blade? Say for instance, after this quilt, she's working on the challenge built, should I change it? It would have been pretty busy and used a lot by then. So how often do you change your rotary blades? Well, I think it all depends on if it's dull or not. So if you feel like you're having to press too much or if you're pressing and you're cutting and there's spots that are not cutting, then I would switch it out. Sometimes you can get sharpeners. I find those don't work that well. I have one of those sharpeners, but if I'm in a pinch and I don't want to go to the store, I will just use my little sharpener and just see if that helps. But you know, probably a couple quilts I think can get use out of a rotary cutter. Yeah, yep, I agree. I do this a lot with sort of rotary cutter, scissors, my machine and changing my needle, I wait until it tells me that there's a problem. So like you said, you'll know when your rotary cutter is getting dull. I know a lot of people, especially with things like needles too, they say every six to eight hours, they change it just because they know it could be getting dull. I want to squeeze as much use as possible out of everything I have. So I will wait until an issue, but I will say just on a safety note, 'cause I feel obligated to say it, sharper rotary blades are safer than dull ones. Obviously if you have a dull one, and you're having to push extra hard and you know, there's more risk of slipping and cutting yourself. So I mean, to a certain extent. If it's just missing a thread every now and then, say every seventh cut, you're probably fine. But I mean, if you're having to really push and double cut each time, then it's definitely time to change that blade.