Quilting with Flannel

If you've never tried flannel in a quilt, it's something you need to consider. I love flannel. Think of flannel pajamas, how wonderful they feel on a cold winter's night. Well, the same is true for a quilt. There's nothing more snugly than a flannel quilt. And today, flannel comes in beautiful, beautiful prints. We've got plaids, we've got leaves, we've got little children's prints, even, that are adorable. I love making little quilts, even for my dogs. They've got the cutest little prints, and my dogs just love ratting around in the quilt and rooting in it and getting it just right before they snuggle down in their beds. We're even seeing precuts for flannels, the jelly rolls and the charm packs, the layer cakes. Those are, for those of you that aren't familiar with precuts, the squares, the strips are already cut for you, so you can put a quilt together lickety-split. A lot of the work is taken out of it for you. And it's nice to see that they're including flannels in these wonderful time-savers. I'm also finding quite a few wonderful panels coming out in the flannel that can add interest to your quilts and make it very fast and easy to put a quilt together. But working with flannel is a whole different ball game than our typical quilting 100% cotton fabrics. Flannel is 100% cotton. It's another cotton fabric, but it is treated differently to get the wonderful nap. There is a nap to a flannel. And what that means is that the fibers go differently in one direction than in the other. It may be a little hard to see on camera, but you will notice that if you have the nap going in different directions, the way the light hits, it will make it look either darker or lighter. So you want to be aware of that direction when you're quilting, when you cut. You'll also notice, you can see it quite easily here, the flannel is a very ravely fabric and it also is very linty. So I recommend several things. Number one, preshrink flannel. Go ahead and preshrink it. Yes, it won't feel quite as crisp when your quilt is done, but it will save you a lot of headaches if you preshrink it. First of all, cotton tends to shrink, and for some reason, flannel even more so. And it tends to shrink up to 3%. So now your quilt that was a 100-ish inches may only be 97 inches. If you preshrink it, it will take at least 1 1/2 to 2% of that shrinkage away. You'll still have a little bit, but not as much. But more importantly, you'll get rid of a lot of the lint, and that lint builds up in your machine. So as you're working with flannel, make sure you clean your bobbin area, make sure you clean your machine quite a bit. And that's a big shout out to my longarm friends. Really check your bobbin area when you're quilting the machine, because it will just become filled with lint very, very quickly. Don't let it deter you, though, just be aware of it. Flannel is also very, very stretchy. It's a stretchy fabric. Even along the straight of grain, it's a little stretchier. And particularly, like any fabric on the bias, but even more so. So I highly recommend avoiding little tiny pieces. I recommend avoiding triangles with the biased edges until you're a little more comfortable working with it. Be very careful with your pieces. Don't stretch them, handle them a little more gently. I recommend, especially when you first start working with it, this is a wonderful, simple quilt, but it looks like a million bucks when it's done up in flannel prints called "Turning Twenty." It's all squares. It goes together lickety-split. It looks like that classic flannel quilt look that you want, that cabin look, I guess you could say. And it's all squares, so you aren't going to get as much distortion. Another good book is the Thimbleberries "Fireside Flannel Quilts." As you can see, they've used big blocks. Think big, think the six, eight, 10, even 12-inch blocks, and then quilt them to keep them steady and from moving. But think bigger pieces, think bigger blocks. And then when you get a little more comfortable, of course, you can go down to the smaller blocks. Another thing I recommend is when your quilt is finished, especially if you're sending it out to a longarm quilter, I want you to stay stitch the edges. When you stay stitch the edges, this is an example, this was a flannel quilt that I did, all you're doing is about 1/8 of an inch away from the edge of the quilt, I want you to just stitch with a regular stitch. Especially if you have seams like this piano border on the edge of the quilt, or even where your block seams are. It keeps them from coming apart. And more importantly, stay stitching keeps the edges from stretching. Your longarmer will love you for it, because they don't have to deal with the quilt getting out of square as much. So that is a very, very important consideration. I think you're going to find that once you get hooked on flannel, you're going to love it. It's wonderful for a quilt backing. I love it, even if my quilt is traditional 100% cotton on the top, I love using flannel on the back. When I said preshrink it, if you're going to shrink your backing, make sure you preshrink the top of your quilt, as well, even though it's out of the traditional quilting fabric, because you don't want it to get distorted by the top and the bottom shrinking at different rates. So I highly recommend go ahead and preshrink everything if you're going to have flannel involved. It's wonderful for a backing. And the quilting on flannel is wonderful. You get beautiful texture and definition when you quilt on flannel. So give it a try. I think you'll find you really like it. And you'll definitely stay warm in the winter.